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| author | www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> | 2026-03-28 14:01:09 -0700 |
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| committer | www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> | 2026-03-28 14:01:09 -0700 |
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diff --git a/78315-h/78315-h.htm b/78315-h/78315-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e5067e --- /dev/null +++ b/78315-h/78315-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5352 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no,date=no,address=no,email=no,url=no"> + <title> + Oliver Constable, vol. 2 | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .5em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +.tdr {text-align: right;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + +blockquote { + margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + +figcaption {font-weight: bold;} +figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; text-align: inherit;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} + +/* Poetry */ +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +/* .poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} */ +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +p { text-indent: 2em; } /* Adds first paragraph indent */ + +h1 span { font-size: .5em; } /* h1 and h2 sub headings */ +h2 span { font-size: .7em; } + +.sub1 { font-size: .5em; } /* Preset font-size adjustments */ +.sub2 { font-size: .8em; } +.sub3 { font-size: 1.2em; } + +.flat { text-indent: 0em; } /* removes first paragraph indent */ + +.front { /* Matches h2 but w/out chapter marker */ + font-size: 1.5em; + font-weight: bold; + margin-top: 20px; + margin-bottom: 10px; + display: block; + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + } + +.hang { /* adds hanging indent */ + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; + text-align: left; + } + +.tdh { /* adds hanging indent */ + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -1em; + text-align: left; + } + +.tdt { vertical-align: top; + text-align: right; } /* Custom table adjustments */ +.tdb { vertical-align: bottom; + text-align: right; } +.tdw { white-space: nowrap; + text-align: right; } + +.poetry-container { display: flex; + justify-content: center; } + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} +.poetry .indent1 {text-indent: -2.5em;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78315 ***</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + + <h1 class="nobreak" id="OLIVER_CONSTABLE"> + OLIVER CONSTABLE + <br> + <span>VOL. II.</span> + </h1> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center"> +<span class="front">OLIVER CONSTABLE</span> +<br> +MILLER AND BAKER<br> +<br> +BY<br> +SARAH TYTLER<br> +<span class="allsmcap">AUTHOR OF ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ ‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ETC.</span><br> +<br> +<i>IN THREE VOLUMES</i><br> +<br> +VOL. II.<br> +<br> +LONDON<br> +SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE<br> +1880<br> +<br> +<span class="allsmcap">[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</span> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS"> + CONTENTS + <br> + <span class="allsmcap">OF</span> + <br> + <span>THE SECOND VOLUME.</span> + </h2> +</div> + +<table> + <tr> + <td class="tdw">CHAPTER</td> + <td colspan=2 class="tdr">PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XI.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">Oliver cultivates Jack Dadd</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">1</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XII.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">Harry Stanhope’s Notion of being a Yeoman</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">27</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XIII.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">Oliver’s Mission to the Women of his Class</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">56</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XIV.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">The First Attempt</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">76</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XV.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">The Annual Excursion</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">101</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XVI.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">The Middle and End of the Feast</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">127</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XVII.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">Agneta Stanhope</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">147</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XVIII.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">Oliver’s Lecture on Wordsworth</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">165</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XIX.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">An Illusion</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">194</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XX.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">Oliver causes a Split in the Chapel + Connection because of his dogged + Opposition to Hartley, Norris, and Co.</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">221</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XXI.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">Mutiny in the Mill and the Bakehouse</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">253</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdt">XXII.</td> + <td class="tdh smcap">A Reformer’s Reward</td> + <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">272</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> + + + <div class="front" id="OLIVER_CONSTABLE_1"> + OLIVER CONSTABLE, + <br> + <span class="sub2"><i>MILLER AND BAKER</i>.</span> + </div> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI"> + CHAPTER XI. + <br> + <span>OLIVER CULTIVATES JACK DADD.</span> + </h2> +</div> + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver</span> was happy enough to discover, in the course of an evening call +which Jack Dadd paid at the mill-house, that Jack had turned his mind a +little in the direction of the rearing of vegetables, and the training +and bearing of fruit trees. He had a voice in making the best of his +father’s garden. His own name had appeared in the list of successful +competitors at the Horticultural Show.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span></p> + +<p>‘Your blockhead of a gardener is making a mess of these artichokes, and +your medlar don’t carry half the crop it ought to;’ Jack found fault in +his free and easy style, as Oliver and he were strolling in the garden, +while Fan sat in solitary dignity within doors.</p> + +<p>‘Very likely,’ Oliver answered, philosophically at first; and then he +proposed quickly, ‘Give us a lesson, Dadd?’</p> + +<p>‘You ain’t above taking it,’ said Jack Dadd, nodding, ‘though your ass +of a man may be. But you don’t suppose I’m going to put a spoke in my +own wheel, by telling you how to be my successful rival at the show?’</p> + +<p>Jack was not in earnest in his refusal, for he was naturally obliging +and good-natured, while dealing with customers who were mostly women +gave him a habit of civility. But he considered it smart and out of +shop to appear knowing, selfish, and blustering, just as he reckoned +it spirited and dashing to use bad <span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>language on occasions, without +entering much into the meaning of the words. Oliver had fallen out of +knowledge of the lad, and was not certain either of his simplicity or +his affectation, so he changed a little in his tack.</p> + +<p>‘What would you say to setting up a field naturalists’ society in +Friarton, and having occasional excursions to furnish a correct +catalogue of the flora of this district of England—not a bad district +for the purpose?’ suggested Oliver.</p> + +<p>Oliver’s mind had gone off to a version of the pursuit of herbs in +which there should be only the mildest species of rivalry. ‘If we were +to tramp whole days,’ he said to himself sanguinely, after what he half +hoped was an inspiration, ‘over pastures, through woods, and down the +centre of ditches, crying “Eureka!” with one consent, when we came upon +an outlying specimen of nettle, we should assuredly hob-nob together +before we had gone out three times.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span></p> + +<p>‘Oh! bother, no,’ said Jack, throwing a bucketful of cold water on the +first spark of the project. ‘There is some sense in growing vegetables +and fruit, and even garden flowers—though the breakjaw names of the +last is enough to stop the business—I mean, of course, the last things +out in the flower line, for nobody cares about the poor old things that +had no show along with their scent, like cottage bonnets and short +skirts, which mother will tell you were so modest and tidy. But to take +the trouble to hunt up and nickname weeds, I call sheer waste of body +and mind, fit only for pottering gentlefolks, schoolmasters, and fogies +of that kidney, or for your would be geniuses among the working-men. +You would have a pretty sprinkling of the lowest ruck wanting an excuse +to be off from a day’s work, and expecting you to pay them for joining +your society. I tell you, Constable, it don’t pay—either him or anyone +else—to take a working-man from <span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>his work and set him up as a genius. +Just you see how it would answer with your bakers. Besides, I, for one, +don’t care for being mixed up with every blacksmith and carter who +takes it into his conceited noddle that he has a turn for gathering +weeds and storing trash.’ And Jack strutted a little as he walked, and +puffed out his pink and white cheeks.</p> + +<p>‘You are wrong,’ maintained Oliver, ‘and more’s the pity for the other +ways in which a working-man spends his holiday. But look here, Jack, +you meet him in the cricket-field?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! that is different,’ said young Dadd, carelessly. ‘That is an +understood thing. But as for my club, we have only a young weaver and +a shoemaker or two able to bat and bowl at our evening practice. The +working-man who lives by his cart-horse sinews is mostly too tired for +any place save the alehouse, after six o’clock.’</p> + +<p>In spite of the slightness of the encouragement <span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>he had received, +Oliver did feel his way to originating a field naturalists’ society. +He sounded his own millers and bakers, and discovered no Robert Dick +among them; none went in for weeds. However, in his search, Oliver hit +on a stalwart journeyman in his service, who had a small taste for +butterflies. Oliver himself had no elegant scientific bent in this +direction, but he introduced his baker to the ancient keeper of an +ancient, dusty, mouldy, and well-nigh forgotten museum in the town. +True, the keeper, in the neglect and oblivion which had fallen upon his +charge, had lapsed into hopeless indifference and absolute infidelity +to his trust: but he was sufficiently moved by the strange event of a +visitor—a pupil—however humble, to the museum, not only to furbish up +the remains of what had once been a creditable display of native and +foreign butterflies, in the entomological cases, he showed a salutary +sense of shame, by volunteering to make a report to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>the survivors of +the committee, who had mismanaged the affairs of the museum, for the +purpose of inducing them to employ a portion of the small fund which +still remained at their disposal, to pay the young baker to replace the +native ‘peacocks’ and ‘emperors,’ that had dropped and crumbled from +their pins.</p> + +<p>Oliver fondly flattered himself that he had done some good in +this quarter. But unfortunately, the big young baker was of a +self-conscious, sensitive disposition. He was abashed by the sudden +favourable notice of a pursuit, which, though he had fallen into it, +he had always been accustomed to look upon as very much the childish +folly his companions held it to be. He allowed himself to be overcome +by the half-jealous chaff which went on in the shop at the result of +the jeering information which some of the men had volunteered to give +their master. The unfortunate admirer of butterflies began to hate the +mention even of a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>beetle or a bumble-bee. He doggedly declined to +have anything to do with refilling the cases in the museum. He showed +Oliver, in a nervous but unmistakable manner, that the man would have +none of the master’s sympathy, and took refuge in the skittle-ground +nearest to his lodgings, that he might not be tempted into the fields, +and betrayed into the absurdity of butterfly-hunting, thus destroying +the <i>esprit de corps</i> between him and his brother-bakers, and +alienating them from his side. Oliver’s small amount of good done +effervesced in harm. And when a letter in the ‘Friarton News’ only +bore the fruit of several more or less cordial and enthusiastic +replies from those ‘pottering gentlefolks,’ schoolmasters, and a +working-man or two, of whom Jack Dadd had spoken, Oliver withdrew +from the scheme, leaving the members who had suggested themselves to +render it an accomplished fact and to include in the society—if they +had the wisdom <span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>to extend their bounds in that direction, all the idle +young ladies in the neighbourhood—who were not too fastidious, or +too delicate, or too lazy to enter the ranks, and to take to making +herbariums, in place of playing incessant games of croquet, badminton, +or lawn-tennis, whichever happened to be in the ascendant, alternately +with district-visiting under the last fascinating curate. They were +very well qualified to do this work without him. Oliver was sensible +that he might incur the reproach of not knowing his own mind. But he +did know it well enough not to be diverted, by a specious and rather +agreeable prospect, from his proper purpose. If none of the Dadd and +Polley set could be drawn out to study botany, he would let it alone +for the present.</p> + +<p>The next bright idea which struck Oliver was to join Jack Dadd’s +company of volunteers—not that Jack was their captain, but he was an +influential member of the corps. He was a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>tolerably smart soldier, a +fair shot, proud of his uniform and of what he had learnt of drill. He +might be a greater man in the volunteer ball-room than at a sham fight, +but he was honestly possessed with the notion that he was serving his +country and forming part of her martial bulwark. For that matter he +occasionally terrified his mother by swaggering and threatening, after +a tiff with his father, to join any reserved force which should be +called abroad.</p> + +<p>Oliver was perfectly aware that he could never be what Jack called ‘a +dab’ of a soldier, but he was not sure that Jack would not like him +the better for his defects. It would be a great nuisance and fatigue +to Oliver to walk and hold himself straight and still, like other +men, and not to be perpetually in disgrace, but he might try what he +could accomplish in bodily self-restraint. It would be what moralists +would call ‘good discipline’ for him, at any <span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>rate. At the same time +he remembered, and even reminded Fan of what he had said to her on the +evening of his coming home, as to his being out of place in a barrack +yard.</p> + +<p>Fan was not too generous to refrain from assenting with grave irony, +though she had no particular objection to his joining the company +of volunteers, which included men of all ranks, if only Oliver had +asserted his claims and got a commission—not put himself on a level +with young Dadd. ‘Jack Dadd is odious,’ Fan had said with effusion to +Oliver one day, as she recalled the young draper’s loud trousers, tight +boots, and ‘light kids,’ when he figured as a ‘Sunday swell.’ Fan also +cherished lively recollections of what she had suffered from Jack Dadd +on the occasion of a party at the Polleys, which she had been forced to +attend soon after leaving school. Jack would not be kept at a distance +by any effort of girlish majesty, and when he had happened to sit next +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span><span id="cor1"></span> +to her, he had presumed to administer sundry nudges with his elbow +to emphasise points in his conversation, without regard to her stony +disregard of the signals.</p> + +<p>‘Not a bit,’—Oliver denied the odiousness stoutly; ‘Dadd is not half a +bad fellow; he is manly in his way, and though that way may not be good +form,’ reflected Oliver, falling inadvertently into school slang, ‘it +is not altogether his fault, poor beggar.’</p> + +<p>Oliver paid heavy penalties for his ambition, in the Masonic +Hall—converted for the nonce into a drill hall—and in the +five-acre field, where the volunteers went through their exercise. +Discipline alone prevented Jack Dadd and his cronies from roaring and +rolling about with laughter at the recruit’s disqualifications and +misdemeanours. After many evenings’ enforced attendance and irksome +drudgery, at the hall and in the field, and a journey along with some +scores of excited men cooped up in the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>insufficient accommodation of +a limited number of railway carriages, followed by a march of several +miles through clouds of dust in order to perform a series of wildly +entangled evolutions, before a general officer, who smiled grimly at +the performance, and marked out Oliver for particular reprobation, +Oliver counted disconsolately his gains from the extensive sacrifice +of his leisure. He was on easier terms with Jack Dadd and the rest, +since they had at least one more subject in common. He was invited as a +matter of course, and had, indeed, a right, to join the others in what +Jack called their ‘watering,’ and which might more appropriately have +been styled their ‘beering,’ and their occasional little suppers at +the inns they affected after drill. These young men of the people were +not dissipated fellows farther than what was implied by the fact that +certain members, like Jack, were inclined to aspire to a flavour of +dissipation as an element in manliness. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>Their gambling was to a very +limited extent, though it might reach to the bottom of their slenderly +lined purses, in stakes of small silver at the billiard table, which +an enterprising Friarton innkeeper had provided for them, as well as +for their betters, in addition to cribbage boards and packs of cards. +The noise and riot into which the high spirits of the company broke out +at times might be a little coarse, but it was not more outrageous than +the mad nonsense which Oliver had witnessed, and, sober-minded as he +was for the most part, had joined in, occasionally, when well-bred lads +met in each other’s rooms on the banks of the Isis. For that matter, +its utterance served in both cases as a safety-valve for the exuberance +of life, the joy in existence, which soon enough expends itself and is +replaced by a burden of care, worry and weariness, even when men stop +short of bitterness of heart and despair of spirit.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span></p> + +<p>The pity was that though there were no deans and proctors at Friarton, +and though the intervention of the rural Charlies or Bobbies might not +be called for, the public of the little town was at once more lynx-eyed +and sterner in its judgments. There was far less allowance made for +the young plebeians than for the young patricians. Unaccountably and +inconsistently, much more was expected from the former than from the +latter. Old heads on young shoulders were unhesitatingly demanded in +many quarters in the case of the embryo tradesmen, with their poor +education, and their slender resources by comparison for occupying +their leisure hours. It was hard to say why this inequality of opinion +existed, unless the early call of these young shopmen to earn their +bread by the sweat of their brow, and the hand-to-hand struggle of +some of them with poverty and privation from their cradles upwards, +might be supposed, by an austere necessity, to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>steady and dignify the +lads betimes, not to drive them desperate and impel them to snatch +greedily at any small indulgence, however base and fatal, which came +within their reach. If this were the explanation, an exceptional though +perilous honour was conferred on ‘the counter-jumpers’ when they were +expected to be wiser than their fellows.</p> + +<p>For Oliver was certain of one thing, that if any draper’s assistant, or +saddler or ironmonger’s apprentice, in Friarton happened to be simply +intoxicated, not so much with strong drink as with the restless energy +and furious mirth of youth in an ebullition that would be treated with +tolerant tenderness at a university, and punished by nothing worse +than the mild reproof or the nominal fine, which was a trifle light +as air to the privileged undergraduate, the young tradesman would be +generally set down as drunk with less ethereal liquor. If caught in +the act of creating a disturbance so heinous as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>waking the silent +night with hideous clamour, giving chase to a surprised, surrounded, +and hustled guardian of the public peace, smashing wantonly a street +lamp, or wrenching off ‘maliciously’ a bell or knocker, he would be +hailed before a bench of magistrates, and mulcted of a sum out of +all proportion to his exchequer. And that was not all. He would have +to pay what was for him a far heavier penalty. His character, which +was his capital, his chief dependence for work and livelihood, would +suffer. His employer, though he had been young himself once, would be +so influenced by the magisterial verdict as to begin to lose confidence +in his assistant. The inspector of the Sunday or night school in which +the lad might have been religiously enough inclined, and sufficiently +benevolent to take an interest and have a class, would sharply signify +to the offender that he was no credit to the institution, and had +better give up his connection with it. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>The clergyman, receiving +the report of the inspector, would not think himself justified in +interfering; on the contrary, he, too, would commence to look coldly +on his young parishioner. The lad, sunk in his own estimation by the +judgment of those he had respected and who ought to know best, slinking +away from their condemnation to seek refuge with his fellow-sinners, +who could not at least set their faultlessness against his errors, +might become the dog with a bad name in a fair way to be hung.</p> + +<p>Oliver Constable did not see how the unequal dispensation of justice +was to be made even, but he smarted under the sense of it. The smart +tempted him to act very much after the fashion of the great Dr. Johnson +when the young bucks for whom he had a kindly regard invaded his room +at midnight and summoned him to a lark. In like manner and with less +solicitation, Oliver remained many an evening <span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>in the society of Jack +Dadd, and of lads with even fewer hostages to respectability than Jack, +and went with them—careless of what people said of his, Oliver’s, +taste—in the young tradesmen’s senseless but harmless enough raids +through the town, because Oliver Constable believed that his presence +was a protection to the others, even more than a check on their +erratic proceedings; yet in return for the double support, Oliver’s +<i>protégés</i> to a great extent fought shy of him.</p> + +<p>In these boyish demonstrations in which he chose to bear a part, +Oliver had not the relief of cultured cleverness, some development +of which had usually been intermingled with the ‘great fun’ +and ‘awful jolliness’ of a gathering of university lads, whose +rollicking propensities had not been altogether toned down by blue +china and sage-green <i>portières</i>. If at a certain stage of the +entertainment, missiles would fly about, howls be resorted to, and +batterings of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>the door indulged in, at another there would occur +lively mimicry of the Union speeches; parodies of old classic odes +would carry the mind back to Greek and Roman feasts; viewiest of +views—transcending the most extravagant speculations of ancient and +modern philosophy—would be aired, and would serve at least to show +that the young revellers had inherited thoughts and fancies, however +crude, as well as the rampant spirits of their years.</p> + +<p>But here among the youth of Friarton, which was not golden, or even +gilded, a bad style of practical joking and buffoonery—gone out +elsewhere save in the worst style of regiment; the boisterous rendering +of the mock heroic and still more excruciating comic songs of the +lower order of theatres; and a good deal of rude wrangling for lack of +a better mode of argument, traversing the horse-play and threatening +now and then to terminate in the rowdyism of a free fight, formed the +sole alternatives to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>sheer noise. These young shopmen, who were very +ordinary lads, were nearly a century behind their social superiors in +superficial civilisation. Oliver used to compare his class sorrowfully +to those nations in Europe like the Poles and Hungarians kept back to +do the needful work of repelling the hordes of Eastern barbarians, and +apparently never able to make up for lost time.</p> + +<p>Oliver Constable did not for a moment imagine that the upper classes +enjoyed a monopoly or even a predominance of moral and intellectual +gifts. But the truth was pressed home upon him painfully, that while +genius, which is above all accident of circumstances, and which is its +own teacher, is rare, cultivation tells in producing a higher average +of second-rate ability, or the specious appearance of it, in the better +educated grades of society. And where the <i>matter</i> is not of the +best, the <i>manner</i> always plays an overweening part. There did not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>happen to be a ‘mute inglorious Milton’ in Friarton in those days, +so Oliver missed the intelligent echoes of the Marvels and Butlers of +the period, which he had been accustomed to hear at Oxford. Even with +their aid he had been apt to get tired of youthful gaieties, and to +call them intolerably flippant and shallow, but, in contrast with his +former experience, the clumsy gambols of the Friarton lads were dull +as ditch water. Oliver could not have stood them long, had it not been +for the strength of his purpose and that higher humanity which awoke in +him such sympathy with his kind, above all with the class in which it +seemed to Oliver his chief responsibilities were to be found.</p> + +<p>It was slow uphill work to win influence and lull antagonism. Jack Dadd +had made use, more than once in Oliver’s hearing, of bad language. +Happily for Jack himself, he had no real relish for it; he employed it +as an evidence of knowingness and spirit in the light <span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>in which many +swearers indulged in profane swearing in the great swearing age. Some +melancholy prophets report there are ominous symptoms, in high places, +of the return of this epoch, but we must humbly trust that the blooming +time of blasphemy was a century ago.</p> + +<p>At last Oliver interfered: ‘Dadd, will you do me the favour not to say +that again in my hearing?’ Oliver requested, quietly.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! hang it, Constable, we are not to have any preaching or dictating +from you,’ cried young Dadd, colouring up and blustering. ‘If you don’t +like our ways, leave ’em alone. We shan’t cringe for your company, of +which you have made us a gift, without our asking for it, I may say.’</p> + +<p>‘I have not preached or dictated; I appeal to the rest of you fellows,’ +said Oliver, without much loss of temper; while the fellows, who had +their share of the old English passion for <span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>fair play, felt constrained +to mumble an assent to the appeal even though it was against the +deliverance of their comrade. ‘I asked you to drop that expression as +a favour to me,’ repeated Oliver; ‘if you cannot grant the favour, at +least you may refuse civilly.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! if you choose to put it in that fashion,’ said Jack, a little +sulkily, ‘there is no more to be said; all I meant to object to was any +fine fellow’s thinking to come it over us, which I never heard he was +invited to do, and taking it upon him to bid us mince our words to suit +his delicate stomach.’</p> + +<p>But Jack soon forgot his pique, and he made the concession of not +repeating the offence within sound of Oliver’s ears, whatever he +might utter beyond their reach. Possibly the censure had sunk so far +into Jack’s somewhat obtuse mind, that he was rather shaken in the +conviction of the embellishment, supplied to his conversation by his +sporting the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>grossest form of oath with which he was acquainted. He +might even fall into the innocent delusion of supposing that ugly +expletives had ceased to be hurled right and left, in moments of +excitement, by choice specimens—according to Jack Dadd’s ideas—of +young swells at the universities.</p> + +<p>And Jack, with all his pertness and swagger, was not original. He +secretly imitated the social superiors he admired and envied in his +heart of hearts, while, on the one hand, he was professing among his +own set supreme indifference to their claims, and on the other, he knew +his own interest too well not to solicit their custom and attend to +their needs with the utmost civility.</p> + +<p>For poor Jack played a double, nay, a quadruple part. In place of +simply regarding his more aristocratic patrons with that combination +of proper official outward respect, and individual inward contempt, +which his father <span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>and mother entertained for them, Jack’s mind was +farther divided between the two emotions of loving and loathing equally +smothered and nearly equally balanced.</p> + +<p>He appreciated keenly, he was impelled to ape, the alluring +practices of the very gentlefolks who galled him by making use of +him, and, in the case of the younger generation, regarding him with +the easy carelessness and laughing scorn, which had replaced the +tyranny and arrogance of one decade, and the stately countenance +and elaborate benevolence of another. But in the middle of Jack’s +small applause and the compliment of his taking his antagonists for +models, his good-nature did not keep him from grinding his teeth at +their disparaging treatment culminating in the mocking epithet of +‘counter-jumper.’</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII"> + CHAPTER XII. + <br> + <span>HARRY STANHOPE’S NOTION OF BEING A YEOMAN.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Harry Stanhope</span> was welcomed with open arms by everybody in Friarton, +and Horace was more than tolerated for his brother’s sake. Fan +Constable had struck the key-note of public opinion in this England +which some people call democratic, when she said that a gentleman +‘generations deep’ could do anything, always supposing he did it with +characteristic grace, and win golden opinions on all sides. What Oliver +Constable was condemned and ostracised for attempting to do, because +he did it out of loyalty to his class, a deep sense of duty to his +kind, and the most practical form of Christianity, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>Harry Stanhope was +universally applauded and caressed for trying to accomplish in his +burlesque fashion in an idle whim, certainly with no other motive, save +that of serving himself and Horry.</p> + +<p>It was no matter that Harry far outdid Oliver in the liberty he took +with the world of Friarton. Oliver only went to his mill and his +shop, seeking to revive his old familiarity with business details, +and planning how to bring to bear upon them his version of trade +principles. He contented himself with reviving his acquaintance with +old friends of the family in a conventional enough way, simply making +it plain that he acknowledged their obligations and was content to take +his place in their ranks.</p> + +<p>But Harry flaunted his descent from the squirearchy to the yeomanry in +the most outrageous style. He ‘went the whole hog,’ as he had said. He +was like the stage misanthropes who growl and gibe till men doubt their +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>sincerity, only Harry’s blue eyes were too round and limpid for one to +suspect them of depths of hypocrisy. He meant everything he did while +the fit was upon him. He was in earnest so far as he knew, when, like +hermits in general, he went far beyond the original professors in his +actions.</p> + +<p>Harry with his shadow, Horace, not only dined at twelve, sometimes in +the fields in close proximity to his workers, and supped at seven, +he made his own hay, whether the sun shone or the rain fell—not to +the benefit of the hay in the latter instance, drove his own carts, +galloping the cart-horses to the injury of these sober-minded animals, +and led the hoers among beans and turnips with an impartial energy +which threatened to demolish alike crops and weeds. He laid aside the +civilised encumbrance of a morning coat, as if he were engaged in +perpetual cricketing and rowing matches. He walked with a pitchfork +over <span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>his shoulder as some squires carry a spud, when the tool was +quite unnecessary. And he did what no yeoman within a radius of many +miles of Friarton had thought of doing within the memory of the oldest +inhabitant—he came into the town in character, in his shirt-sleeves, +riding a bare-backed horse, as he had been taking it to water, when +it had flashed across his mind that he might be in time to intercept +the post letters—not that Harry’s letters were of any particular +consequence, either to himself or other people—or that he ought to +look after a job which was in progress for him at the saddler’s or the +smith’s. He actually astounded the assembled Friarton market, he did +not scandalise it—nothing which Harry could do did scandalise his +neighbours—by entering it in such primitive guise. He had made up his +mind, to begin with, that to be a yeoman at Copley Grange Farm was the +same as being a colonist, and the more he brought his establishment +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>and personal practice to what Harry conceived to be the colonial +level, the more refreshingly novel the play was, and the more he +enjoyed it.</p> + +<p>Horace did not adopt all Harry’s new customs, for the sufficient reason +that Horry was a sickly fellow, unable to cope with Harry in braving +fatigue and exposure to the weather. But Horace not only found no fault +with his chosen champion in his antics, the brother liked the changed +life, and was the better for it in body and mind, because Harry, while +he was still tasting its essence, and skimming its cream, enjoyed it +with the lad’s naturally huge omnivorous appetite for enjoyment, and +Harry’s enjoyment was always more or less infectious where his nearest +friend was concerned.</p> + +<p>The infection spread to more than Horace when Harry came into Friarton +Town, in the fancy dress which he had taken into his head to wear, +whistling or singing aloud in his fine <span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>baritone, though the song was +of no higher musical or intellectual calibre than ‘The Two Obadiahs,’ +with sheer lightness of heart and gleefulness of spirit, the very +pessimists, in the habit of finding the foundations of the world out +of joint, and holding life to be stale, flat, and unprofitable, were +won to smile, as well as to sigh. Harry Stanhope was such a goodly +spectacle in the flush of his youth and strength and exuberant spirits, +if one could but forget that there came a term to these magnificent +animal gifts, and a just reckoning for the days of their triumph. +After all, the recollection only lent a wistful charm to all that was +fleeting in Harry’s glory.</p> + +<p>It was not merely those who were closest to his own class—the +Wrights, Fremantles, and the vicar’s family—who delighted in Harry +and conspired to spoil him as the finest young fellow in the world, +perfectly charming, so delightfully natural, frank and unpretending, +so imperturbably <span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>good-natured in accommodating himself to the +difference in his position—though, to be sure, he could not forfeit +his birthright. It was not merely Fan Constable who beamed on Harry +as on a gay and gallant deliverer from the social depths into which +Oliver’s extraordinary recantation had consigned them afresh. At the +same time, Fan alone saw meeting in Harry, in the strangest, most +fascinating manner, both the confirmation and the contradiction of all +her early predilections and aspirations, until, in mingled conviction +and reaction, she was ready to honour gentle breeding more than ever; +while she became in a way reconciled to Oliver’s flight, which appeared +to coincide with Harry Stanhope’s course. She began to feel dubious +whether Oliver were so entirely wrong as she had supposed, whether +he were not following, without guessing it, a veritably noble and +knightly impulse in his raid against modern trade dragons, and his +search for the San Graal <span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>in the homeliest quarters. That dim undefined +notion, whether true or false, did much to restore Fan’s equanimity +and cheerfulness. What did it matter if the Wrights and Fremantles, +who were so frightened for hazarding their own debatable footing, +turned their backs, when Harry Stanhope lent the Constables the far +greater weight of his support, and constantly directed upon them his +laughing face, coming to Friarton Mill ten times oftener and on twenty +times more friendly terms, than Oliver with his contradictory spirit +authorised?</p> + +<p>Yet Oliver too, in spite of himself, liked the lad for the very +qualities which were the furthest removed from Oliver’s own—the +boyish thoughtlessness, sanguineness and absence of any sense of +responsibility, the half-kindly and wholly confiding selfishness which +impressed on Harry the rooted belief that the whole world revolved, +somehow, round him and Horry, and was in a manner made for their +gain or <span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>loss; the half-audacious goodwill which made Harry claim, +so unhesitatingly and in such a large measure, the goodwill of his +fellows. Harry was as free from self-consciousness as he was mercurial, +and the summer sun warmed him through and through, without his being +ever troubled with a shiver of repulsion, or a groan of obligation, +in the view of wrongdoing and retribution on every side. Oliver was +tempted to admire as well as to despise, to covet while he condemned, +Harry’s monstrous exulting egotism.</p> + +<p>After the first shock of his sister Fan’s inconsistent secession to +Harry Stanhope’s side of the question, Oliver looked on, without +surprise, if a little sardonically, and witnessed Harry’s unbounded +success in Friarton.</p> + +<p>For the very Dadds and Polleys, who cherished a deadly distrust to one +of themselves that had penetrated to a higher sphere and professed +to return to his own, fraternised in a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>manner with the intruder, +called him ‘the right kidney,’ a pleasant young gentleman as ever +lived, taking his frolic as he was free to do. Bless you, he could not +really let himself down, be he ever so willing. His people and his +class would see to that. It was only his way of making fun. He was +a gentleman-farmer, like the lord-lieutenant, or as the late Prince +Consort had been, though he amused himself with aping the old yeomen. +And he had no fad of raising up the middle-class, any more than he had +of leaping over the moon. He gave himself no airs of superior wisdom +and virtue. It was only that he could make himself happy anywhere, and +had an agreeable word to say to everybody; while nobody was such a +donkey as to mistake Mr. Stanhope’s manner or presume upon it.</p> + +<p>Old Dadd laughed loudly at Harry’s pranks, recalling old members of +the gentlefolks he had known who drove coaches and made walking <span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>tours +in sorry disguises for bets. He entertained Harry himself with these +reminiscences, to which the lad listened with his usual affability, old +Dadd standing hat in hand the while and Harry forgetting to bid the +draper cover his head in the mock yeoman’s presence.</p> + +<p>Jack Dadd was enchanted when Harry not only enrolled himself a member +of the cricket club, but presided over its entertainments in the +‘Admiral Keppel’ afterwards. Here was an adherent worth having, an +authority as ready as he was great, from his unimpeachable advantages, +on sport and horseflesh. It was rather in pure enthusiastic homage to +his gifts and attainments, than in lurking sycophancy, that, though +Harry was fain to render himself hail-fellow-well-met to his new +associates, Jack began by deferring to him unfeignedly, and headed +the other members in cheerfully acknowledging Harry’s born supremacy. +The would be man of the people accepted the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>unsolicited tribute as a +matter of course, and not at all as if he disliked it. On the contrary, +he showed a very fair capacity for playing the cock of the roost in +addition to his other performances.</p> + +<p>And only Oliver Constable groaned over these indications of what would +be the sort of alliance formed between Harry Stanhope and his adopted +class; how the members of widely severed sets in society brought +together through self-interest and for self-indulgence, would play into +each other’s weaknesses, and simply work out their mutual lapse and +loss.</p> + +<p>Strict disciplinarian as Mrs. Polley was, she did not object to her +girls giggling at Harry Stanhope’s exuberant chaff, and exultingly +accepting bets of gloves and ribands with him, in which the Miss +Polleys were always the winners. Mrs. Polley did not exactly understand +that Harry Stanhope, who at his present stage was incapable of being +anything else than boyishly <span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>friendly and merry with all women, had +chaffed in precisely the same manner the barmaids of his earlier +acquaintance. Mrs. Polley herself smiled broadly on Harry’s jokes, and +called him ‘a good sort,’ a perfect gentleman, none of your stuck-up +pretenders—unquestionably Harry was not a <i>stuck-up</i> pretender.</p> + +<p>The one dissentient voice in Friarton was that of Catherine Hilliard. +When her cousin Louisa took the brothers under her wing, as if Harry +needed the protection, and doted on the youngest, she would have had +Catherine dote on him also. Mrs. Hilliard was too good-naturedly +selfish, too hilariously cynical, too well occupied on her own account, +to be a regular match-maker, supposing there had been scope for +anything save sick match-making in Friarton and the neighbourhood. +But she would not have objected, from the first hour she spent in the +company of the would-be yeoman, to making up a match between Harry +Stanhope <span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>and Catherine. Mrs. Hilliard would have lost her cousin as +a constant companion, but she would have found a jovial ally to her +heart’s content in Harry. And if the attractive young man’s worldly +wisdom was not his strong point, that was Catherine’s look-out, not +Mrs. Hilliard’s. He would form the most hospitable and genial of +kinsmen and neighbours, if he might not have all the qualifications for +a safe husband. On the other hand, the contrast between Catherine and +him was all that could be wished. It would do Catherine a world of good +to have her bookishness—detestable in a woman—her untenable notions, +her chillness and asperity, routed out of her by a gay-tempered, +easy-minded husband, whose easy-mindedness might not preclude the +wholesome discipline of any amount of obtuseness and stubbornness, when +interference with his masculine prerogatives was in question.</p> + +<p>But unfortunately, Catherine could not see <span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>the beauty of the contrast +between herself and Harry Stanhope, as establishing an incontestable +point of union where the two were concerned. ‘He is no better than +an overgrown boy,’ she said, with a half-weary scorn. ‘He has not a +thought or care beyond his pleasure.’</p> + +<p>‘My dear, that is what is so particularly nice about the boy,’ +remonstrated Louisa Hilliard. ‘You and many other people are weighed +down with care, and the consciousness of care, to no purpose. What we +specially want at this epoch in human history, is a robust faculty of +enjoyment.’</p> + +<p>‘I think I prefer the poor deaf fellow,’ said Catherine, in her spirit +of contradiction. ‘He loses his identity in that of his brother.’</p> + +<p>‘Is that such a boon to the world, to lose one’s self and live in one’s +neighbour’s life?’ asked Mrs. Hilliard, shaking her head in merry +incredulity. ‘I am not sure that it might not prove easier and more +comfortable, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>on the whole, to be another than to be myself. I should +feel so deliciously neutral, you may be sure—nothing could touch me +very nearly. Your toothache would tingle quite bearably, suffered by +reflection through my nerves.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t think it is quite so with Mr. Horace Stanhope,’ said Catherine +coldly. ‘I don’t suppose you understand, Louisa.’</p> + +<p>‘Not I, farther than that it is not in <i>you</i> to go with the +multitude, either for good or evil. Child, I am certain it is for +good, and to our credit, when the rest of us heartily admire and like +a fine, manly, friendly fellow like young Stanhope, and I should have +thought—though I am not super-subtle in my intuitions—that you would +have valued him for standing by the poor creature his brother; whom, +with what I must call a morbid taste, you set yourself to prefer to the +fairy prince in his own person.’</p> + +<p>‘What!’ exclaimed Catherine, ‘value a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>man for caring for the dog which +is fonder of him than of anything else in the world?’</p> + +<p>‘Well, there is a proverbial estimate of “a dog’s life,” while there +are many good sorts of men that kick their dogs occasionally, when they +need chastisement,’ speculated Louisa, maliciously treading on one of +Catherine’s hobbies.</p> + +<p>‘Yes; and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals exists +for the punishment of men’s brutality,’ said Catherine, with her pale +cheeks flushing.</p> + +<p>‘My love, the Society has to do with ruffians—let us trust they are +comparatively rare. You are speaking like a girl who has been brought +up by maiden hands, who expects a man to behave like another girl +such as herself, not to say like an angel. She does not take into +account his different nature and rearing, together with his greater +temptations; she shrieks hysterically, and calls his least faults <span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>by +preposterously exaggerated names. Men who have nothing to do with her +either laugh at her, or fall into ecstasies over her baby innocence. +But woe betide her and her husband—should she consent to take such +a necessary appendage—if she will not open her eyes, and submit to +know a little more of the world. You must accept an older woman’s +word for it, Catherine, that a man may kick his dog when the animal +is troublesome; he may even swear a little at his wife, under great +provocation, and yet neither be absolutely barbarous nor profane.’</p> + +<p>‘There may be something in what you say with regard to the wife’—began +Catherine, in perfect sincerity, but was stopped by the laughter of +Mrs. Hilliard.</p> + +<p>‘For shame, Catherine, to prefer a dog to a man—or rather to a woman. +Never mind, there is another respectable old saw to draw inferences +from, in this case: “Love me, love <span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>my dog.” No doubt you are paying +Harry Stanhope the most delicate of compliments in your favour for +Horace.’</p> + +<p>Catherine disdained to reply to the insinuation.</p> + +<p>But though Catherine declined to add to the number of Harry Stanhope’s +worshippers, she appeared, like the other women, to be drawn into his +court where he stood the centre, next to Mrs. Hilliard herself, of the +bright stirring drawing-room at the Meadows. Catherine’s imagination +tempted her to speculate, with however little hope, on the diversities +and vagaries of human character. A new type arrested her, as <span id="cor2"></span>an unknown +specimen stops and holds fast the naturalist. Harry was strange to her +in the sparkle of his bold thoughtlessness and inconsiderateness and +pure and simple egotism. The qualities were all naturally repugnant +to her, still they attracted her curiosity for a time, as qualities +which she had never <span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>met before, and might never meet again, in the +same degree or combination. Catherine, too, looked and listened as +if carried away with the charm when Harry, nothing loth, figured as +the hero of the hour, recounted his youthful exploits by flood and +field, volunteered, without a grain of shyness or scruple as to the +acceptableness of his service, to be at the beck of any and every woman +present—for Harry was no languid, supercilious, fine gentleman. He was +a gallant cavalier to the heart’s core. He only asked to be allowed +to help every woman, while he helped himself liberally to the first +place in her regard. But he was the reverse of the odious cowardly +personage—we may trust he figures more largely in fiction than in real +life—the lady-killer, professed or unprofessed. All was open and above +board with Harry; and upon the whole his attentions were too impartial +to have much individuality or to be invested with special danger. It +seemed as if he consented <span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>to be heard or seen for the entire sex’s +benefit, as he span his yarns—not particularly original, wise or +witty, but with an indescribable charm in them, due to their fresh +lightheartedness—of his school and college frolics: his prowess at +‘hare and hounds;’ how he was a bogie to his dame; his surreptitious +introduction of ‘Pin Him’ into his quad; the row he had been in when +town fought gown; the wrinkle he had been able to give such an awfully +clever fellow as Tyler in making up for the private theatricals at +the Wests—whose place was near Harry’s cousins. Then he sang his +songs whenever they were wanted; songs less aggressively warlike and +sportsmanlike than the songs of Jack Dadd and the other peaceful +counter-jumpers—sometimes love songs, or songs expressing passionate +memories, and tender yearnings, with fiery depths, and pathetic echoes +which Harry Stanhope had never fathomed, but which yet thrilled the +listeners as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>the words and airs were given by the full flexible young +voice.</p> + +<p>It looked as if Harry were carrying all before him, and winning each +heart—including that of dreamy, dissatisfied Catherine Hilliard.</p> + +<p>Oliver Constable judged so, as he lounged and contorted himself +unnoticed in the background, and said it was the way of the world and +that young beggar’s luck, of which he was not worthy, which he could +not be expected to prize at its proper value.</p> + +<p>Two people knew better. Catherine Hilliard could not be called one of +the two, for she never took the question into consideration. It would +have felt too preposterous to her to enquire beforehand, what her +feelings might or might not become, for any hero of flesh and blood. +Besides, Harry Stanhope was not a man to her, only a boy, a big, merry +boy, who formed a momentary study for the thoughtful woman.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard, while she was perfectly conscious of the latent +antagonism between Catherine and Harry Stanhope, still threw +them somewhat ostentatiously together, making Catherine play the +accompaniments to his songs, and causing him—which was a little of a +trial to Harry’s good temper, to be always on the side of Catherine—an +incorrigible bungler, almost as bad as Oliver himself—in the lawn +games in which Harry Stanhope and Fan Constable were adepts, a pleasure +for game lovers to look upon. Mrs. Hilliard elected Harry to take +down Catherine to the improvised suppers which were apt to follow +the improvised parties at the Meadows. Mrs. Hilliard could manage +these manœuvres with so much ease that it robbed them of half their +attractiveness to the manœuvrer, she was wont to complain privately, +since Catherine was as blind as a baby to any premeditation in such +arrangements, and was only more or less bored by the consequences. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>All +the same, it was her, Louisa Hilliard’s, duty to do what she could as +a hostess in the judicious assortment of her guests, and to show her +cousinly regard by doing what she could also to prevent Catherine’s +missing, by anything save her own folly, the chance of what would never +be a great and yet might prove a suitable establishment, in days when +girls, far more attractive to the generality of men than Catherine was, +could not pick and choose in making a match.</p> + +<p>If the hostess baffled and plagued any rival pretender—say Fan +Constable—to a lion’s share of Harry Stanhope’s universal attentions, +so much the better for Mrs. Hilliard’s entertainment, and if it were so +much the worse for the rival pretender, whose fault was it save her own?</p> + +<p>Harry Stanhope was not so egregiously foolish in his vanity as to fail +to penetrate the fashion in which Catherine Hilliard was taking <span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>stock +of him, weighing him in the balance, and finding him hugely wanting. +‘Look here, Horry,’ he protested, thrusting his fingers through +his fair hair in comical discomfiture, after an hour’s compulsory +companionship with Catherine, ‘that girl has been looking at me through +a microscope, and picking holes in my credit all the evening; she knows +not only how I was ploughed in my smalls, but all about that time I was +rusticated for the beastly row at Walsh’s, though I never told her a +word of the mess. I say, I wish the old woman’ (an irreverent reference +to Mrs. Hilliard, to which the lady would not have objected in the +least) ‘would not persist in pairing us off together. It is no go; +though no doubt Miss Hilliard’s tin might be of use in the farm, she +would not have a gift of me, and unfortunately I could not get the tin +without offering my precious self in exchange.’</p> + +<p>‘Ain’t she more the style we’ve been accustomed <span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>to—I mean among our +people—than Miss Constable, for instance?’ enquired Horry, doubtfully, +of his oracle. ‘I think Miss Hilliard is rather a fine girl; looks like +a lady without making a fuss about it.’</p> + +<p>‘True, oh king! She is stately in her stiffness as a stage duchess. And +she is a sap as well as a swell. I bet you she reads as hard as old +Herculaneum, not that she ever alluded to a book to me, except to one +of Lever’s stories, which she just mentioned tentatively, with great +scrutinising eyes fixed upon me, the better to assure herself that it +was <span id="cor3"></span>something in my line. But I have glimpses of the old beggars the +English poets, and so forth, if not of the Greek and Latin humbugs, +in the turn of her neck and the wave of her hair; I am in constant +horror lest she should so far forget herself as put me through my exams +again—which line in “Paradise Lost” I prefer, or whether I agree with +Bacon that gunpowder <span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>ought to have been <span id="cor4"></span>invented before lucifers. I +don’t think I can stand it much longer if Mrs. Hilliard will go on +acting as if we were made for each other, though I am prepared to own +that Miss Hilliard is innocent of any pretence in the matter. How could +it be otherwise when she is so stunningly wise and learned, and the +rest of it? Oh! I say, when you see all that, and the knowledge don’t +crush you, suppose you go in for the lady and the tin, to be ploughed +and harrowed into the dirty acres of Copley Grange Farm, and so relieve +your brother-officer of the obligation, Horatio?’</p> + +<p>Horry laughed the discordant laugh of the deaf, and mumbled a +disclaimer of the honour and the implied preference on the part of +Catherine, while Harry went on speaking out his thoughts to his +second self with yet greater zest. ‘Now, Miss Constable believes in +me—fact, I assure you. That plucky, go-ahead little woman is, not to +say swindled, by me, for to do <span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>myself the justice, I never sought to +take her in; but she gives me credit liberally for a thousand manly +virtues I don’t possess. She half tempts me to believe in them myself,’ +protested Harry, with an excited laugh. ‘It is not like you, old +fellow, who have rowed in the same boat with me ever since we two came +into this blessed world, and have naturally grown rather blind to my +weaknesses and besotted about me altogether. She who never saw me till +this season, with all her cleverness, and she is uncommonly clever, +which is better by a long chalk than being bookish—not that she is not +an educated woman also—does more than take me on trust. She endows me +with all the energy and endurance which are hers, not mine. She speaks +as if I were going, single-handed, to bring in the waste places of the +earth, and found a family. Confound it, Horry, it’s rather nice, and +generally improving to be believed in like that by a handsome, good +woman, as true as steel, I’ll <span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>wager my head, and as proud as Lucifer +in her own way, while she is ’cute enough in anything else to see +through a millstone,’ finished Harry, complacently stroking his beard, +as if he were beginning to suspect that he was really a finer fellow +than he himself, or any other person, save the faithful follower by his +side, had given him credit for.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII"> + CHAPTER XIII. + <br> + <span>OLIVER’S MISSION TO THE WOMEN OF HIS CLASS.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver</span> nourished the forlorn hope that he might do something with the +girls of his rank in raising their aspirations and refining their +habits. They at least belonged to the gentler sex, and ought to be by +constitution more tractable and altogether of finer clay. He took to +dropping in of an evening at the Polleys, where the male element in the +back parlour was but feebly represented by superseded Mr. Polley.</p> + +<p>Oliver turned with disdain from Fan’s despairing warning: ‘Oliver, +if you don’t take care, Mrs. Polley will think you are proposing <span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>to +“keep company” with one of her girls, and if you don’t fulfil her +expectations, she will set you down unhesitatingly and proclaim you +openly to be “a flirty, shillyshallying fellow, who don’t know your own +mind.” Are you such a greenhorn that you require to be told you cannot +look twice at a girl of this stamp, or exchange three sentences with +her, without the girl, or her parents for her, concluding that you mean +something in the matrimonial line, and going on to class you as her +admirer and suitor, and to calculate what sort of match you will make +for her? As you are, undoubtedly, a great match in the Polleys’ eyes, +you ought to behave with common prudence.’</p> + +<p>‘No, no!’ denied Oliver vehemently, blushing hotly with chivalrous +pain. ‘You are aspersing your whole sex, Fan, in the persons of +tradesmen’s daughters; and if there were any ground for the aspersion, +it would be high time that it should be done away with, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>by the +introduction of wider, simpler, more friendly intercourse between young +men and women.’</p> + +<p>‘Perhaps you really mean to ally yourself with the family,’ said Fan in +her vexation, falling into the offence which was unusual with her, of +employing almost as tall language as ’Liza Polley might have adopted on +a similar occasion. ‘To be perfectly consistent, you ought. All I ask +is that you will tell me in time.’</p> + +<p>‘That you may carry off your goods and chattels before they are +contaminated by coming in contact with Miss ’Liza’s or Miss ’Mily’s +bridal finery, and renounce me as a brother before you are forced to +own her as a sister,’ said Oliver, beginning to laugh. ‘All right. But +I don’t own to the soft impeachment yet, though, if ever my time should +come, why not a Miss Polley—I beg her pardon for the liberty taken +with her name, but I did <span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>not begin the impertinence—why not a Miss +Polley, I say, as well as another?’</p> + +<p>Oliver spoke with light defiance but with some bitterness underlying +his challenge, for his thoughts had gone back to an encounter that +morning, when Catherine Hilliard, driving with her cousin, had passed +him and his baker’s shop, literally with unseeing eyes. She had looked +more delicate and tired out than ever. No wonder, when she was being +not merely morally starved, but slowly poisoned in her Palace of Art, +her fantastic ideal world.</p> + +<p>Oliver was too manly, with a higher manliness than Jack Dadd’s or +than that of many persons of far greater pretensions than Jack, +to experience the particular dread of misconception which Fan had +sought to instil into her brother. He was shy enough in his way, and +he fought tough battles with his shyness every day he lived, but +his self-consciousness did not take this form. He had revolted at +it every <span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>time he met it, not only when young Dadd boasted of girls +making dead sets at him, and showing themselves, poor little souls, +spoony on his account, but when fellows, who might have known better, +expressed their alarm for the lasting consequences of the temporary +associations of Commemoration Week, or talked of running the gauntlet +of the dowagers and damsels of the London season. Oliver had felt +still more aggrieved when he found the same gratuitous insinuations in +books of ‘unexceptionable tone,’ where men—bachelors and widowers, +of mature years and sane minds, masters of the situation in every +other respect—were represented as timidly putting themselves under +the wings of female relations that the heads of the houses might be +protected from the wary advances or bold attacks of the single women +in their neighbourhood who cherished designs on their freedom. Well, +no doubt, there were women of all kinds, like men; but was it honest +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>women, modest women, women with souls, women like the men’s mothers, +sisters, future and past wives, whom brother-men thus insulted, while +sister-women handed on the insult?</p> + +<p>Oliver’s company certainly induced the Polley girls to forego, for +the evenings on which he called, their wanderings abroad in search of +gossip and amusement, which their mother tolerated because young folks +must have their day, and the girls had their markets (matrimonial) to +make, being bound, in a measure, to keep on the outlook for settlements +in life.</p> + +<p>But the young Polleys’ gaddings were restrained within certain +well-defined and not to be subverted bounds of time and circumstance. +The Miss Polleys, collectively or singly, might frequent their +neighbours’ houses or such promenades as Friarton afforded, till three +<span id="cor5"></span>quarters past nine, but they must be safe at home, if not at supper, +at the latest by ten o’clock, when the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>house-door was formally locked +by Mrs. Polley in person. No Miss Polley was at liberty to stray into +companionship not approved of by her mother, not even ’Mily—‘the most +owdacious of the set,’ as Mrs. Polley was sometimes moved to term her +favourite daughter, in referring to ’Mily’s flights of wild spirits and +self-will—dared to transgress in these respects.</p> + +<p>Oliver took it as no particular compliment to him that the Miss Polleys +should be induced to stay at home when he was a visitor. Common +hospitality—of which their class was by no means deficient, required +it of all or some of them. And it seemed to the young man that any +variety must be welcome in the atmosphere—the intellectual stagnation +of which was equal to its literal oppressiveness—laden as it was with +the odours, from the shop, of cheese, sugar, and coffee.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Polley—the presiding genius—when she was to be seen in private +life, for she was <span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>sometimes detained at the close of a busy day in the +shop, suffered from the fatigue consequent on the day’s labours, and +although she was always equal to an exertion, and roused herself to +brandish and snap her fingers figuratively and in a friendly—well-nigh +a playful fashion in Oliver’s face, he felt convinced when he or any +other stranger was not there, must give herself up to cross-tiredness, +to nagging her daughters, and snubbing her husband between fits of the +gapes over her knitting, or coarse hemming, and rough and ready darning +of household linen.</p> + +<p>Mr. Polley, who was not regarded as company worth counting, by his +own children any more than by the rest of the world, did no more than +contribute the dreariest platitudes and the stalest incidents from his +second day’s newspaper, to the feast of reason and the flow of soul. +There grew to be a merit in the girls’ persistent giggles and in the +light-hearted empty chatter and idle gossip, pointed by personalities +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>and spiced by scandal, with which they stirred the heaviness, and the +absence of all dignity and beauty, from which Oliver was not astonished +that they made their escape, when they had the opportunity.</p> + +<p>The Polleys had another sitting-room besides that behind the shop, a +best parlour or drawing-room as the girls liked to call it, in which +they sometimes sat with their hands crossed in their laps, or engaged +in fancy-work, entertaining company. But as Oliver chose to come to +them in the character of a family friend, a distinction which they +appreciated, Mrs. Polley overruled her daughters’ objections and +elected that he should be received in the ordinary family room.</p> + +<p>‘He shall see us as we are,’ said the matron when the Polleys were all +together in the back parlour one evening before supper. ‘He sha’n’t +have to say we were honey to his face and molasses behind his back. +Besides, we don’t do <span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>nothing we are ashamed of. I tell you what, +gals, if he has got any one of you in his eye already, he’s that kind +of chap, if I’m not mistaken, he’ll think a deal more of you, and be +more likely to grow sweet on you, if he finds you with me and father, +in your house-gowns, working at your needles in the parlour here, than +if he were supposed to catch you sitting like dressed-up dolls, at +your fine-lady nonsense of crochet and bead-work, in the other room, +as, I dare say—for I have not been out at the mill-house for years +now—I’m a stay-at-home, even if Fan Constable were readier with her +invitations—his sister sits from morning till night.’</p> + +<p>‘It’s all you know, mother,’ said ’Mily, a well-grown buxom girl of +eighteen; ‘but at least it shows you have not made yourself cheap at +Friarton Mill. Fan sees callers in her bare cold hole of a drawing-room +certainly; but when I go there, which is precious seldom as I know <span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>she +would rather have my room than my company, she is always pretending to +be notable over a heap of such common hemming and back-stitching as +even you can do. Fancy! she was making bed curtains, and not keeping +them out of the way either, the last time I was there. She is as busy +as any sewing girl over the vicarage old women’s flannel petticoats and +children’s cotton frocks. Rather she than I slave for such cattle. We +give a good subscription to Mr. Holland’s poor-box, and that’s enough, +I should think. But Fan curries favour with the vicarage people, who +have taken her up, though Peter Constable was an old chapel-goer like +we are, and Oliver goes to chapel still. I am at a loss to tell what +gentility she has more than us, except that she’s that proud and +stuck-up,’ and ’Mily sat up in her chair with Fan’s most frigid air, +amidst the loud applause of her sisters.</p> + +<p>‘Now mind what you’re about, ’Mily,’ her mother reproved the actress; +‘you may not be <span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>far wrong, and you’re smart at taking people +off—there’s no denying it, but you may do it once too often. What +would Oliver Constable think if he saw you? He may not have any +nonsense about him, but he won’t care to have his sister turned into a +laughing-stock.’</p> + +<p>‘I’m sure I don’t mind a fiddle-stick what he cares,’ protested ’Mily, +taking high ground.</p> + +<p>‘Hold your tongue, and don’t speak again to me, Miss,’ insisted Mrs. +Polley. ‘You get too much of your head as it is; but you sha’n’t spoil +your chances by your folly before my very eyes.’</p> + +<p>‘It ain’t likely to be me, mother,’ cried ’Mily, rather enjoying the +implication. ‘It will be ’Liza if it’s to be any of us. She is fitter +to tackle him with her rubbish of poetry, which ought to suit a college +man.’</p> + +<p>‘Me!’ ejaculated ’Liza, a delicate, rather indolent girl, in injured +innocence. ‘I never spoke about poetry to Oliver Constable.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span></p> + +<p>‘And I should just like to hear you try it,’ Mrs. Polley gave her +literary daughter fair warning; ‘though a song is all very well at a +proper time and place, at a party or after supper. I was a good singer +myself in my day—you need not make faces, ’Mily—and I can raise the +tune yet in chapel a deal truer than a pack of set-up madams with +money wasted on them in an instrument and in piany-forty lessons.’ The +last cut bore reference to the superannuated piano in the Polleys’ +drawing-room, and the two quarters’ fees for instruction in playing on +it, vouchsafed by Mrs. Polley to her daughters, being what they might +claim as their due in education according to the growing requirements +of their station. ‘But to sing my Maker’s praises is one thing,’ went +on Mrs. Polley severely, ‘or even to be able to manage a song or two +in addition to a hymn, and to have any traffic with play or poetry +books is another. To my mind, they’re worse than novels and romances, +and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>you all know what your deacons think of them. You gals may read +them on the sly sometimes, but it had need to be on the sly, for if I +get my hands on such devil’s books, into the fire or out of the window +they go. Them’s my opinions, and if you think to defy them you know the +consequences.’</p> + +<p>‘Compose yourself, my dear,’ ventured Mr. Polley, looking up from his +newspaper. ‘I apprehend you’re going just a little too far. I remember +the old minister gave in to recommend Uncle Tom’s——’</p> + +<p>‘Uncle Tom’s cat!’ interrupted Mrs. Polley, disrespectfully. ‘A good +turn of honest work is a far better employment than snivelling over +any made up story—though it were Mr. Holland or the old minister +himself as made it up. You can tell him I said so, if you like. I +wonder anybody can be so silly—not to say so unprincipled, for I +call it downright want of principle, to be taken in by printed lies. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>Reading trash of stories and verses never paid a debt, or filled a +hungry stomach, that I ever heard tell of. But I’ll tell you what +they’ve done,’ speaking triumphantly in vindication of her theory, +‘they’ve brought an idiot like Poet Dymott,’ alluding to a local poet +of humble vocation, ‘as low as the union. Luckily his silly of a wife +who encouraged him died early, and they had no children to suffer +from his not sticking to his last and shoe-leather. Fools’ tales sent +a light-headed gipsy like Mrs. Dadd’s last servant into the county +asylum, after she was pulled out of Buller’s Brook, where she might +have stopped still for all the washing her character had got. We should +be a deal better off for maids-of-all-work, when we’ve the misfortune +to need ’em, if it were not for the trumpery “Family Heralds” and +“People’s Journals” as the girls have the impudence to take out, +throwing away their pence, and sitting up at nights by the help of +prigged <span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>candle-hends, at the risk of setting houses on fire, and +creeping and dawdling about their work next day. I don’t hold against +a book as is an improving book, and deals with our latter hends,’ Mrs. +Polley granted, showing herself a little more liberal and capable of +making a concession, ‘at a proper time, on a Sunday evening, when it +rains cats and dogs, so as to make chapel out of the question, and +there’s nothing else to do at home. But I’d like to see any of you gals +settle to a volume of sermons, if there was a glistening chimneypot +hat or a draggled tail of a skirt to watch passing the door. I don’t +make any stand against Polley muddling for ever amongst his newspapers, +since he’s no good at any better job.’</p> + +<p>‘Missus Polley!’ objected the gentleman, looking up again from his +newspaper, with his hat still on his head. Though he rarely stirred +beyond the parlour, he wore his hat, except when he was at meals or in +bed, as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>if to give him the help of a few inches added to his masculine +height. He spoke half under his breath in subdued displeasure.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t deny I like myself to know what’s a-going on, when I’ve time +to listen, which ain’t often, and Polley’s reading out saves me the +trouble of looking over the news,’ confessed the matron candidly, +taking not the smallest notice of her husband’s appeal unless by +speaking, if anything, in a louder key. ‘Besides, it helps to keep him +out of harm’s way.’</p> + +<p>‘Missus Polley!’ groaned the defaulter more clamorously.</p> + +<p>‘What are you Missus Polleying me for?’ his helpmeet turned on him +briskly. ‘You ain’t going to deny the tricks you played me when first +we went together, Polley? It is as well to keep you out of temptation, +though I should just like to see you trying on that trade again, now +that I’ve got the upper hand, and you’ve got some notion of the value +of a good wife, as has kept a roof <span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>over your and the gals’ heads, and +a full table, and the shop flourishing more than it ever did in your +day. You ought to bless your stars, Polley, that you ever set eyes on +my face, or that I consented to have a bad bargain in you.’</p> + +<p>’Mily Polley was a little tired of hearing the chronicle of her +father’s delinquencies and her mother’s virtues; she broke in upon the +monologue, reminding her mother of an instance of inconsistency in her +conduct. ‘I wonder, mother, you ever let poetry books lie in the house +or suffer ’Liza to look into them.’</p> + +<p>‘You know as well as I do, ’Mily,’ Mrs. Polley explained, shortly, +‘that ’Liza has not been so strong as the rest of you gals, and when +she has not been able to sit up with her <span id="cor7"></span>colds and influenzas, there +was no great wrong done in her diverting herself with a book, though I +could have wished it had been of a more sensible and serious kind. I +did try to set Mr. Holland upon her about that.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span></p> + +<p>‘I was dumpish enough, I can tell you, without reading mouldy sermons,’ +grumbled ’Liza. ‘I wonder how any of you would have liked to be +condemned either to do that or count your fingers, for my strength was +that gone I was not able so much as to hold a crochet-hook, and Mr. +Holland said there was no harm in my pieces, some of them were most +elegant.’</p> + +<p>‘Then ’Liza’s books,’ said Ann Polley, who was commonplace and +practical to excess, ‘are not ’Liza’s any more than ours, only that she +looks into them sometimes. They are school prizes and Christmas gifts, +and keepsakes from friends, though I think they might hit on better +presents. It would be a great pity if you were so far left to yourself +as to burn them, mother, since some of them are quite handsome “table +books,” which I should be sorry to handle except to dust, for fear of +spoiling their red <span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>and green and gold backs. They are a great ornament +laid round the drawing-room table.’</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Polley, decidedly, ‘that is the right place for them. +They will turn nobody’s feather head, and waste nobody’s time save in +the dusting, lying there.’</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV"> + CHAPTER XIV. + <br> + <span>THE FIRST ATTEMPT.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">After</span> all, if Oliver had always been ushered into the drawing-room +which these closed books were supposed to embellish, he would not have +found many traces of higher aspirations in its gaudy carpet, and chairs +and tables of one ponderous monotonous style, since Mrs. Polley’s +influence had at least saved them from being slim and gimcrack, with +its samples of meretricious fancy-work, in which there was as little +fancy as there was use, than he could discover in the back parlour. +The family room was furnished with the darkest drugget and coarsest +mahogany and hair cloth. It did not, according to the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>Polleys’ ideas, +admit of any attempt at ornament. It was reserved to fulfil their +notions of ease and comfort, the table being often covered and littered +with the materials employed in the girls’ home dressmaking, and the +chimney-piece given over to Mr. Polley’s tobacco-pouch and pipes, and +Mrs. Polley’s thimble and reels of cotton.</p> + +<p>’Mily Polley was not a bad mimic in that lowest development of art +which is contented to grasp and caricature such salient details and +absurdities of human nature as come within the artist’s limited +observation. And though there was a horrible absence of reverence +and tenderness in the girl’s rendering of some old woman’s palsied +utterance, or some half-imbecile boy’s stutter, in her cool giving +of her own father’s stock phrases, even in her close copies of Mr. +Holland—the Polleys’ clergyman’s—stiff or strained gestures in the +most solemn part of his services, the representation was the only +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>version of the drama which ever reached the Polleys, while it was as +good as a play in forcing Mrs. Polley to relax into a grim smile and +to forget for a moment her rare achievements, and in stimulating Mr. +Polley to clap his hands magnanimously at the mocking echo of himself.</p> + +<p>There was no theatre in Friarton, and if there had been, the Polleys +belonged to a branch of the Christian Church which condemns theatres +without reservation, nay, sometimes, as in the case of Mrs. Polley, +extends the condemnation to play-books as well as players.</p> + +<p>Yet it struck Oliver Constable that the Polleys were at the level of +civilisation when the theatre, if not abused and tabooed, would have +naturally come in as an effective instrument in their training. He +arrived at the conclusion as he formed one of the audience to the +mimicry which ’Mily Polley, who was proud of her gift, was sometimes +tempted to practise before her friends and acquaintances, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>in addition +to her family; as he took notice of the nicknames which abounded in her +vocabulary in about an equal degree to that in which they flourished +in Jack Dadd’s speech; and as Oliver observed the glee with which the +girl utilised any exceptionally silly or stupid person who had the +misfortune to enter her circle, making him or her serve for a temporary +butt. The last was grievously disloyal, and the worst thing was that +nobody—neither the mistress nor the master of the house, not even +’Liza, who was certainly gentler than the others, who sometimes read a +little from choice, and who was therefore under the impression that she +had culture—recognised the disloyalty.</p> + +<p>But the mimicry was an intellectual effort a shade in advance of +the bald individual experiences, the tittle-tattle purely peddling, +or more or less mischievous, which constituted the staple of the +Polleys’ conversation, and was just such an effort as the theatre +might have <span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>spurred on and supplemented. Oliver imagined the Polleys +might have liked to go to a respectable theatre which was not under an +ecclesiastical ban, might have enjoyed a broad farce, and relished and +profited so far by one of the homelier order of tragedies.</p> + +<p>What he could not imagine was, that till they had gone a little farther +in elementary knowledge, and without the theatre, which comes in to +meet the intellectual law that perception and imitation are among the +first acts of the mental powers of a child, or an undeveloped man or +woman, any of the Polleys, with the exception of ’Liza, could derive +the smallest benefit or satisfaction from the mass of books, which, to +be sure, they left untouched. He ceased also to be surprised that the +Polley family should be in the section of Mr. Holland’s congregation, +the members of which composed themselves, after the prayers and hymns, +to look round on their neighbours and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>manifestly take stock of their +presence, looks and clothes, or who openly nodded and audibly snored +throughout their clergyman’s finest peroration, with which, however, +they would not have consented to dispense, since they took a reflected +pride in his fervid eloquence as contrasted with the vicar’s well-bred +conversation in the pulpit. Oliver had ceased to get impatient with +what he had been accustomed to consider Holland’s violent transitions +in a variety of bad styles—from the strongly sensational to the +familiarly anecdotal—bordering on the facetious, when the critic +was better able to estimate the order of intelligence with which, to +a large extent, the preacher had to deal. Oliver began to pity the +poor teacher, who was bound alike by his calling and his conscience +to impart the highest truths which could be addressed to humanity, to +these dense minds and stolid hearts.</p> + +<p>Oliver found the girls by fits and starts <span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>furiously busy, or, in spite +of their mother, absolutely idle. It was clear that notwithstanding, +or because of, their mental vacuity, they luxuriated in idleness a +little after the fashion of the dwellers in Eastern zenanas. The +Polleys still regarded idleness much as their poor young drudge of a +maid-of-all-work, taken from the workhouse school, looked upon it, with +more reason, as one of the great gains of having risen and prospered +in business and the world. To do nothing save gabble idle gossip was +next best to wearing fine clothes every day of the week and every hour +of the day, and eating at every meal early lamb and salmon, pastry, +plum-cake, and strawberry ices, which the Polleys’ class are now in +circumstances to add to their more primitive dainties of pork-pies, +muffins, and shrimps. Idleness was one of the established privileges +of ladies to which the girls gave full credit, and of which they were +not slow to avail themselves when <span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>they had the opportunity. It might +pall in time, and so might the fine clothes and fine food in unlimited +quantities, but such satiety the Polley girls were not likely to attain +so long as they lived under their mother’s rule. And they prized their +advantages the more because they were still reduced to snatch at and +make the most of them when these only came in their way occasionally, +by the arbitrary will of Mrs. Polley.</p> + +<p>Oliver observed that the girls had none of the sustained industry of +Fan, and that they were constantly seeking to shirk the share of work +in the shop and house which their mother laid upon them. ’Mily was +particularly adroit in slipping off her burdens, and her active mother +made more allowance for ’Mily’s adroitness than for ’Liza’s laziness +or Ann’s slowness, showing that she considered rebellion incidental +to youth, and admired in this case the cleverness with which it was +carried out. Mrs. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>Polley said her youngest was ‘a sad pickle,’ but +she admitted she had been thoughtless and fond of her pleasure beyond +everything in her own girlhood. She daresayed a house and family on +’Mily’s refractory shoulders would steady her in time. She would rather +have a girl smart for her own ends than a silly or a dawdle, any day; +so far from regarding the smartness thus exercised as dishonourable to +the culprit, Mrs. Polley saw in it a proof that ’Mily would be worth +something in the end.</p> + +<p>The household needlework, which is still done at home in houses like +the Polleys’, was another task which the girls evaded, or discharged, +with a grudge, in the most slovenly fashion. Such disgraceful +needlework, to be worn in private, as the Polleys passed through their +clumsy, careless fingers, Fan Constable would not have accepted from +the least scholar in the vicar’s wife’s school.</p> + +<p>It puzzled Oliver that Mrs. Polley, who <span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>insisted so strongly on the +merits of energy and enterprise in her own case, could, as a matter +of principle, permit the comparatively useless, frivolous lives her +daughters led. But when he sounded her one day on whether she did +not approve of training girls to self-help, as fit successors to +their fathers and mothers in such a shop as she herself conducted +successfully, he found, strange as it seemed to him, that she too, was +tinged with the girls’ views of gentility. Oliver, who had thought to +have pleased his father’s old friend by the suggestion, had never gone +so near to sending her off in a huff—and Mrs. Polley in a huff was a +formidable person to have to do with.</p> + +<p>‘Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Polley, with a dry +cough, ‘my gals don’t ought to look forward to going into the shop. I +haven’t toiled my shoulders and my ’ead, and stood there till I was fit +to drop on market-days, for my gals to have to follow in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>my shoes. +If business goes with us as it has done, I’m ’appy to say, ever since +I took it in hand, I expect I shall put enough by to enable the gals, +if they ain’t provided with husbands in the meantime, to live on their +means, and do nothing, like the best in the place.’</p> + +<p>Oliver was silenced.</p> + +<p>The one employment which entirely overcame the Polleys’ taste for +idleness, and on which they entered with a will and the utmost +zest, was what Oliver reckoned their unfortunate blunder in making +objects of themselves in the line of dress. They could always be +eagerly interested in frilling themselves from top to toe, in pulling +down their old flounces, and furbelows, and bunches of skirts, and +reconstructing them, if possible, in an uglier shape than before. They +were never wearied of manufacturing the most grotesque apologies for +hats and bonnets. Oliver thought, in contrast, of Fan and Catherine +Hilliard’s simple <span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>gowns and quiet hats, which, if he had known it, +’Mily Polley classed as the dowdiest things out, and farther stated +that it was her deliberate opinion, only a learned young lady with +her head in the clouds, like Miss Hilliard, or a girl with the cool +assurance of Fan Constable, would take it upon her to be so plain in +her dress, and would not at least try to be wearing what was stylish.</p> + +<p>Oliver, poor benighted man, only marvelled, on the contrary, how even +girls in their vagaries could accomplish such tremendous mistakes in +what one might have imagined would have been the congenial art of +adorning their own bodies.</p> + +<p>Nobody could call the Polleys’ lives gloomy or austere, yet to Oliver +their enjoyments appeared grievously ignoble, even when they were not +of an animal character. He was very sorry for those girls, whom no man +had hired to worthy work and wages. He thought of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>the innumerable +missions to the poor, and of the ladies who, to their unending credit, +devoted much time and attention to raising the women of the lower +ranks. He recalled the superior advantages which may be held at least +to balance the increased temptations of the upper classes. And he +reflected, with deep regret and shame, how Fan withdrew, and Catherine +Hilliard recoiled, from all association with girls like the Polleys. +What chance had they of escaping from irredeemable materialism and +innate vulgarity—those deadly foes to all that is spiritual and +really noble? What help was extended to them beyond the Sunday sermon +which flew over their heads, and the verses in the Bible—which they +read as a lesson, that had little or nothing to do with their past or +present, but belonged, as Mrs. Polley would have said, to their ‘latter +hends’—to rise above gross self-indulgence—so long as it was not what +the world called vicious? For the Polleys were <span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>not merely respectable, +but even inclined to be Pharisees in their loud boasting of their +respectability. Yet self-indulgence, which was not absolutely vicious, +was in their eyes perfectly admissible and actually laudable. A man or +a woman who would not gratify himself or herself by well-nigh wallowing +in the outward fruits of success, was either a screw or a minx. Heroes +and saints had very little that was heroic and saintly in them to the +Polleys’ mind. All were dragged down to the same low level.</p> + +<p>The Polleys’ standard was very little above that of the most +rudimentary Christians, whether in high places, in courts and alleys, +or in the bush and the jungle. The Polleys would do no murder, would +not pick or steal—unless in those adaptations and adulterations of +groceries, which had become part of a wide-spread system, with which +all trades complied, and which nobody, save a fanatic, dreamt of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>defining as stealing, would prove chaste maids and matrons, would not +literally fall down and worship golden images, and for anything farther +would regularly attend chapel—of which the heads of the house were +members, and would contribute liberally and with great <i>esprit de +corps</i> to the minister’s salary.</p> + +<p>It did not strike Oliver that the Polleys were much exposed to the +temptation to break those commandments which they respected, and for +the rest, with regard to the grand spiritual lives beyond, these were +simply ignored and uncomprehended. Oliver feared there was a more +impassable miserable chasm between the Polleys’ mode of existence and +all that belongs to a higher life, than even the ghastly gulf which +cuts off the outcast in his crimes and wretchedness from purity and +peace, just as it was said of old that the publicans and harlots +were nearer the kingdom of heaven than their extremely respectable, +outwardly moral, nay, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>ostentatiously religious brethren. To do the +Polleys justice, they made no great barren profession of religion; they +contented themselves with being by inheritance and social politics +chapel people, and despising the members of a state and priest-ridden +church.</p> + +<p>Oliver, in his arguments with Fan, had given all honour to the +essential virtues of his class; now it pained him intensely to be +forced to recognise wherein it fell short, even in precedent and +tradition, not to say in word and deed, of the standards and practices +of the more highly cultured and better educated classes.</p> + +<p>Certainly truth was not confined to any rank, and flagrant deception +was confessedly committed by ladies and gentlemen. But these ladies and +gentlemen were not respectable members of their class and, unless in +outrageous instances, counted falsehood brought home to them worldly +dishonour, and concealed <span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>their lapses from truth with all their might.</p> + +<p>But a certain amount of lying did not involve the same disgrace when +it came to light in Oliver’s class. Jack Dadd was singularly obtuse in +perceiving that the twists and turns which he gave to his words and +actions, in order to serve himself, and of which he actually boasted to +Oliver, in the sense of what some Americans would call ‘smart practice’ +or as capital jokes, were neither more nor less than cunningly veiled +lies. As for the Polley girls, they indulged with the utmost freedom +in wild exaggerations, horribly prejudiced statements, and barefaced +fibbing when it suited their purpose, until Oliver hung his head and +almost groaned aloud.</p> + +<p>Of course, as Oliver was thankful to think, there were many much better +representatives of the small shopkeeping class than any he encountered +in Friarton—young men whose public <span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>spirit and intelligence, if not +their culture, far exceeded his own; girls as dutiful as Fan had been +to her father, and with a still higher and truer idea of what made +perfect womanliness, and of a necessity perfect ladyhood, in any rank. +But he feared these formed the exceptions, more or less rare, to the +ordinary rule. They were the salt of the earth, no doubt, but bore no +greater proportion to the social body they preserved from corruption, +than salt to the physical world with which it is incorporated. Oliver +was compelled to suspect that the Dadds and Polleys presented an +average specimen of their class.</p> + +<p>Oliver sought to prove a friend and brother to the young Polleys and +their girl companions as well as to Jack Dadd and his associates. In +order to be so he struggled to show himself patient and judicious with +the girls. He answered all their questions about his former college +experience and present volunteer movement, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>as fully as he knew how. +And then he tried to carry the inquisitors to something in earth or +heaven beyond their small personalities and their life in Friarton, +with so poor a result that he fell back in despair to asking ’Liza +Polley about the poetry—of which she was said to be fond. She did not +impress him as the most intelligent of the sisters, but he fancied if +she had the shadow of a taste for poetry, he had a hold upon her.</p> + +<p>Oliver was in blissful ignorance of Mrs. Polley’s objection to such a +subject of conversation, as not merely trifling in the extreme, but +verging on impropriety.</p> + +<p>For that matter, Mrs. Polley was not quite so good as her word where +a well-to-do young fellow, who might be looking after one or other of +her daughters, was concerned. She gave Oliver considerable license +in his attempts to entertain the girls, leaving him to ‘get thick’ +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>with them in his own way, refraining, to a remarkable extent and +with some disinterestedness, from her usual custom of engrossing the +conversation. She only dropped one little hint which, notwithstanding +Fan’s warning, Oliver failed to appropriate. ‘If you encourage ’Liza +in her liking for such nonsense, you must be prepared to take the +responsibility upon yourself, Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Polley, with +something like a simper which might have been alarming in so downright, +plain-spoken a woman, had it been addressed to a less single-hearted, +self-forgetful man.</p> + +<p>But Oliver undertook the responsibility with a frankness and +fearlessness which were their own defence. He assured Mrs. Polley that +Miss ’Liza need take no harm from the perusal of good poetry, and +pledged himself that, so far from causing her to neglect any duty, it +ought rather to spur her on and brace her to its better performance. He +smiled to himself after <span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>the utterance of so great a platitude, while +the hint evaporated in empty air.</p> + +<p>It was poor Miss ’Liza who felt embarrassed. She had been accustomed to +hear herself accused of literary tastes with an admixture of very mild +vanity and rather more energetic deprecation. She was by no means sure +that the tastes were sufficiently pronounced to stand the investigation +of a university man. She fidgeted and hesitated, and caused ’Mily to +mock her more than ever, when Oliver broached the word poetry to her. +In addition, by common consent, in the light of compatibility of taste, +’Liza found Oliver Constable likely to be set aside by her family and +friends as her ‘beau.’ He was in all probability coming after one of +the sisters in his regular visits to the back parlour, and ’Liza was +the one who struck her own set, at the first glance, as cut out for him.</p> + +<p>’Liza was quite the girl to believe what everybody told her. And she +was not without <span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>a sense of obligation to the world in general and to +her sisters in particular, for handing over Oliver to her. She was +struck by the disinterestedness of Ann and ’Mily, and she was flattered +with the notion of a distinguished conquest on her own part.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, ’Liza Polley was not so simple as to suppose that +her sisters were actuated entirely by generosity in their early +withdrawal from any rivalry in her pretensions to Oliver Constable. +Indeed, in spite of her literary bent, ’Liza was ready to agree with +’Mily in her sweeping assertion that Oliver was ‘a handsome gorilla +of a duffer,’ who was always talking sense, or nonsense which was no +better than sense, since it was past their comprehension, and who was +constantly on the verge of lecturing them. ’Liza did not relish the +imminent prospect of a lecture, however delicately administered, any +more than ’Mily or Ann relished it. She had an uneasy consciousness +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>that Oliver would consider her a humbug, since she had really hardly +any more topics to talk over with him than her sisters could find.</p> + +<p>Above all, ’Liza knew in her inmost heart there were persons—young +men—a young man whom, whoever the world might regard as well matched +with her, she liked infinitely better than she could ever like Oliver +Constable.</p> + +<p>Oliver was a great scholar, and she was not nearly scholarly enough +to be at home with him as she was with that other person, who chaffed +her unmercifully about being a blue-stocking, but who, she was sure, +nevertheless, looked up to her a little for her slender bookish +attainments.</p> + +<p>’Liza dreaded that ‘the word of’ Oliver would separate her from this +more favoured aspirant to her regard.</p> + +<p>On all these counts ’Liza was so reluctant and retiring when Oliver +tried to ‘tackle’ her, as he called the process, on her reading, that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>he felt—even in being foiled anew—at least he could triumphantly +refute Fan’s unwomanly assertion that the Polley girls would be eager +and unmaidenly in receiving and misinterpreting his advances.</p> + +<p>Oliver never got beyond the discovery that ’Liza’s theory of poetry +was decidedly that of rhyme; and she inclined strongly to what was +meretriciously sentimental, especially when the sentiment was that of +pairs of lovers meeting by sunset or moonlight, under oak trees, or in +bowers of roses, or amidst ruins in churchyards. These persons swore +eternal fidelity and incontinently died by violent deaths, or one of +them proved false, as it were for the purpose of breaking the heart +of the other, who continued, to Oliver’s mind, wrongheadedly faithful +to a creature who was not worth a moment’s regret. When ’Liza strayed +slightly from these stock scenes, it was into the superficial splendour +of palaces, or at least into the height of hackneyed <span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>picturesqueness +as displayed in the castles and fortified towns, the crusades, sieges +and battlefields of mediæval times. Followers at a humble distance of +Moore, L.E.L., and Mrs. Hemans, constituted her antiquated school of +poets.</p> + +<p>It saddened Oliver to see that ’Liza’s faint poetic fancy could find +no resting-place nearer home, and remained on that account utterly +divorced from her daily life. It was like a wistful groping for better +things far a field. It reminded him of the manlier sort of songs with +which Jack Dadd and his comrades diversified their ‘If ever I cease to +love’ and ‘Not for Joe.’ How the shop lads, who had not the remotest +chance of being active participators in the open-air stir and joy of +a hunting field, or who were in no danger of knowing any voyage more +exciting than a holiday trip in a river steamer, would give the full +force of their young lungs and hearts to the vigorous refrain of ‘John +Peel’ or ‘The Bay of Biscay—O.’</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV"> + CHAPTER XV. + <br> + <span>THE ANNUAL EXCURSION.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Every</span> year the shop people of Friarton showed themselves so united and +independent as to have an excursion and picnic of their own, on one of +their summer holidays.</p> + +<p>It was something quite different from the day with their employers, +which is such a popular piece of patronage on the part of large firms. +The <i>employés</i> had nothing to do with this, they had their own +day apart. It was the employers themselves, with their wives and +families, who met <span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>and agreed to disport themselves together. It was +as if—supposing the example could be followed on a large scale—all +the linendrapers and all the Italian warehousemen in London arranged to +assemble with their households at some spot, as much more distant and +more select than Epping Forest and Brighton as the masters’ claims to +potentiality and dignity are beyond those of their young men and women.</p> + +<p>Oliver Constable was prompt in supporting the usual celebration of +the day, and in proposing to make one of the company in either of the +two omnibuses engaged to carry the pleasure-seekers to their place of +entertainment. He discovered to his chagrin that the party consisted +chiefly of young people. An American fashion was setting in, which +caused Mr. and Mrs. Dadd, and Mrs. Polley, with their contemporaries, +not to refuse their countenance altogether, but to withdraw to a +considerable extent their presence from the gala. They found the annual +excursion, on the whole, a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>little trying to people of mature years, +and they were not impelled to make the sacrifice on their children’s +account, since these worthy fathers and mothers were persuaded that +their young people were perfectly able to take care of themselves at a +picnic, and that to have their seniors looking on proved a restraint on +the enjoyment of the juniors. Let the elderly people have their outing +also, but let it be distinct and apart from that of the young people, +whose limbs, wind, and hilarity were naturally so much more rampant.</p> + +<p>But Oliver made so great a stand against this innovation on the part of +his fellow-townsmen, and so set his heart on the fathers and mothers +accompanying their sons and daughters, that though old Dadd and Mrs. +Polley did not know what to think of the young fellow’s urgency, they +yielded, and even pressed Mr. Holland, the minister of four-fifths +of the shopkeepers of Friarton, into the service, to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>accompany the +excursionists and say grace at the picnic.</p> + +<p>It was much more difficult to convince Jack Dadd and ’Mily Polley that +the revival of the presence of the elders was an advantage.</p> + +<p>‘The guv’nor and his missus will only be in the way, and spoil sport; +and what do we want with a feller in a white choker out of chapel? +In fact, we have two of ’em; for Constable, though he means to be +friendly, is a bit of a stick—all the worse, sometimes, that he don’t +show his colours in his coat or his tie, or his hat,’ Jack grumbled and +blustered; while ’Mily complained there would be no fun, and threatened +not to go, but soon withdrew her threat.</p> + +<p>For the first time in a number of summers, Fan Constable announced +her intention of being one of the pleasure party. It was a solemn +concession to sisterly duty. Oliver was such a fool (with a folly akin +to that of Henry, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>Earl of Morland, and not altogether removed from +the madness of the Apostle Paul, when he became all things to all +men,) that she could not trust him to spend a whole day in the fields +with those riotous lads, and, above all, those bouncing or languishing +girls, without the protection of her eye upon him and them.</p> + +<p>Ungrateful Oliver had some words with Fan on her going in the spirit in +which she went. ‘If you can’t make yourself agreeable, Fan, and do as +others do, but must stand aloof with what they call fine-lady airs, you +had better stay away,’ said Oliver, with a man’s brutal frankness.</p> + +<p>‘I hope my manners will pass muster,’ retorted Fan loftily. ‘As to +doing what others do, perhaps you will not object to my forming an +exception, if the company begin to pelt each other with gooseberries, +or to play at kiss in the ring.’</p> + +<p>There might have been another recruit, or <span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>couple of recruits, added to +the forces, if Oliver had not rejected the suggestion peremptorily.</p> + +<p>Harry Stanhope was beginning to find that yeoman work was not so +entirely a manly pastime—like hunting and shooting—that it did not +require all the play he could obtain to diversify it and prevent +it from sinking into dull drudgery. He was not particular in his +associates, but showed himself ready to knock up acquaintances in any +class, and have a jolly lark with them at any time.</p> + +<p>‘Won’t you take me with you to the turn-out?’ Harry put it +insinuatingly to Fan. ‘You may fancy I should be in the way, but if +they will let me drive one of the shandrydans, I’ll pledge myself +you sha’n’t be spilt. Constable knows I’m good to handle the ribbons +without an accident. It’s a thundering shame of Constable not to speak +to my merits and Horry’s in this and in other respects, to leave us +out in the cold, and go and enjoy himself like a selfish <span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>beast. I’m +convinced it ain’t your blame, Miss Constable, that we have not got a +bit of paste-board, or <span id="cor8"></span>whatever is necessary.’</p> + +<p>It was not Fan’s blame, for when Oliver said ‘No, a hundred times, +no,’ doggedly, and with nothing save a stern satisfaction in the +consideration that he was robbing Jack Dadd and ’Mily Polley of the +delight of such an acquisition, Fan remonstrated with him privately. +‘Why can’t Mr. Stanhope go if we go, Oliver?’ she asked.</p> + +<p>‘Good heavens, Fan! can’t you see the difference?’ demanded Oliver, out +of all patience with the suggestion. ‘What business has Harry Stanhope +with the Friarton tradespeople? Do you think he would go among them as +his equals? He would go as he would intrude on a brewers’ bean-feast, +or a bargemen’s saturnalia, or a meeting of thieves, or a pilgrimage to +Mecca, without doubt or compunction, to see what he could see, and to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>take his fun out of the proceedings, while some of the idiots engaged +in them might imagine he was there in good faith, as one of themselves. +Am I to be an accomplice in such treachery?’ Oliver’s broad shoulders +went up to his ears, as he imagined Stanhope letting Jack Dadd suppose +he was pumping him, or drawing ’Mily Polley out, and astounding her +ignorant audacity.</p> + +<p>‘It is a relief to hear that there are idiots who cannot be mistaken +for gentlemen and ladies,’ was Fan’s parting shot. After all, she was +not sorry that Harry Stanhope would not be present when she resumed her +place in her father’s circle.</p> + +<p>It will occur to every experienced person that the planning and +carrying out of a large picnic, where the details are not confided to +a public purveyor, or left to qualified servants, must be a little +troublesome. But the amount of business in hurrying to and fro, +consulting, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>fussing and wrangling, which the annual excursion caused +in Friarton, among businesspeople, too, who ought to have known how to +supply the provisions required with the greatest despatch and the least +difficulty, offered a curious speculation to Oliver. He found it the +simplest matter in the world, by a single reference to Jim Hull, and +to former estimates of contributions to the entertainment, to order +and send to the managing committee the quota of pies, tarts, and what +Jim generalised as ‘flummery,’ with which Constable’s bakehouse had +always furnished the excursionists. Why could not all the entrusted +butchers, fishmongers, and grocers do the same? He must conclude that +they, or their wives and daughters for them, took pleasure in first +creating, and then overcoming, obstacles and objections, though Mrs. +Polley asserted she was ‘that wore out’ with all she had undergone in +conducting the preparations and putting down the senseless proposals +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>of some people, that she would a deal rather have three market-days on +end.</p> + +<p>The young women did not give much help, though they ran backwards and +forwards incessantly between the houses of the chief managers, for +three days preceding the excursion. The girls’ principal interest was +absorbed by their costumes for the occasion. As they had imparted +every detail to each other long before, and as they saw each other +every day—both in slovenly deshabilles and what might be called smart +toilettes—Oliver stupidly failed to see how the dresses could be of +much consequence to anybody.</p> + +<p>What attention the young people had to spare was bestowed more on +the style of the feast, and the good things which were to figure at +it, than on the locality of the picnic. Oliver imagined this lack +of concern in what was, in a measure, the object of the ten miles’ +drive—the visit to a well-known ‘hanger,’ or <span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>high wooded bank, which +sloped down to Buller’s Brook—might arise from the circumstance that +the same bourn had formed the termination of the expedition ever since +he could remember. The place was pretty and suitable enough, but there +were other places, a little nearer, or a little farther off—an old +deserted mansion, with a park open on certain conditions to the public; +an ancient church, a treasure to archæologists; a bend of the Brook, +famous for water-lilies; while variety was charming. He ventured to +name a different halting-place, and was put down for a reason which +proved unanswerable to his audience, and which he could not set aside. +There was a rarely used barn near Finchhanger, and the owner placed it +at the disposal of the company in case of rain. In a climate like ours, +such a retreat with its possibilities of indoor games and dancing—even +to no better music than impromptu whistling and singing—to while <span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>away +the lagging hours, was what no wise man could ask his neighbours to +despise. And the probability of seeking refuge in the barn was rather +in the ascendancy this year; not because the skies were more inclined +to weep than usual, but because Jack Dadd had struck out the brilliant +improvement of taking down a detachment of the volunteer band on the +top of his omnibus, and, as everybody knew, dancing on the grass was +better in theory than practice.</p> + +<p>Oliver ended by being sceptical whether a change of place, even if +he could have answered for the weather, would have gained his end or +proved acceptable to anybody save himself perhaps. That was after +he had spoken on the rival merits of the old park and church before +’Mily Polley. ‘Oh! bother the place!’ cried ’Mily frankly; ‘who cares +for the place? One is as good as another, and then there is the barn. +I rather hope the rain will only stop off till we’ve got there, and +after that come down <span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>in a pelt this year, so as to send us all in +where we can eat comfortable, without old Bales’ (to wit the senior Mr. +Dadd, with his rotund figure and his linendrapery business) ‘keeping +us waiting till he has poked about and hunted out the least damp spot +for his lumbago, and mother <span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>has made a fright of herself by tying her +pocket-handkerchief round her throat to guard against a crick in the +neck. And have you heard of young Scissors being so sharp as to secure +ever so many of your band with their instruments, in case we should +have nothing else to do but take a hop? I’m sure I don’t know that we +could do anything better. Oh, I say, Mr. Oliver, I’ll tell you what is +of a great deal more consequence than a park when we ain’t proposing to +pick cowslips, or a church when none of us means to get married just +at present. Will you see—a word at headquarters mayn’t be amiss—that +Jim Hull of yours lets us have oyster and lobster patties this year +instead of cherry pies? “I’m so partial,” as ’Liza says, I would give +my ears for oyster patties. And oh! fancy Jack Dadd has got his father +to fork out two bottles of sherry and two of champagne—the real, not +the gooseberry thing, instead of the lemonade, which was all we used to +have. I don’t care for sherry, but “I adore champagne,” that’s ’Liza +again. I should like to swig it like beer—that’s me. But sha’n’t we +have a guzzle?’</p> + +<p>’Mily called a spade a spade. Oliver was reminded of a market-day when +he had seen a stout country lass gazing longingly into the window of +the shop which Jim Hull had caused to be filled with tarts and cakes +for the occasion. The rustic damsel had great difficulty in tearing +herself away from the contemplation; as she did so she exclaimed with +effusion to a companion, ‘I could eat the whole window full.’</p> + +<p>Oliver sought to make atonement for his recoil from ’Mily’s speech, by +honestly weighing the comparative demerits of what might be <span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>classed as +gluttony and gourmandism. It was the fashion for some ‘great swells,’ +as ’Mily would have called them, not only to indulge in the last, but +to boast of the practice, and hold it up to admiration as an elegant +accomplishment—an essential element of high civilisation. ‘Plain +living and high thinking’ were exploded with them also.</p> + +<p>‘If you will allow me,’ said Oliver meekly, ‘I’ll mix claret cup for +you.’</p> + +<p>‘Thank you for nothing.’ ’Mily rejected the proposal flippantly. ‘Nasty +flat trash. I’m for as much champagne as I can get for my share, +without mother interfering. There!’</p> + +<p>Had ‘the girl of the period,’ with the fine fast tone which was found +to have such a rousing effect on the jaded languor and formal worldly +propriety of Mayfair, come down to dwell among the shopkeepers of +Friarton?</p> + +<p>Oliver showed himself so far amenable to domestic and feminine +influence as to make <span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>the concession to Fan’s having vouchsafed her +company, and as it were pledged herself to civility, of taking his +place with her in the omnibus of her choice—that which did not contain +Jack Dadd and his detachment from the volunteer band. But even without +Jack and his musical performers—who took time by the forelock, and +were guilty of such enthusiasm in their duties as to seize their +instruments at the very moment of starting, and fill the air with a +truly military combination of fife and drum, serving as a summons to +the rest of the townspeople to contemplate the setting forth of the +shopkeepers on their great holiday—the other omnibus, filled with +a company of girls dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, with +rivulets of curls running in every direction; matrons with bonnets +which supported thickets of flowers among cascades of lace; and men in +their Sunday suits, was in itself so hilarious and so unconscious of +any just cause for moderating <span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>its hilarity, that the girls’ giggles +rose into screams of laughter, the matrons shouted through the din +to each other, and the men outshouted their womankind, until the one +vehicle was as noisy in a different way as the other.</p> + +<p>‘Ain’t you a glum sort?’ a brother-volunteer said, in the freedom of +the moment, to Oliver.</p> + +<p>‘No,’ Oliver denied, ‘but I don’t see why I should disturb my +neighbours with my pleasure.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! as to that,’ the other merrymaker turned off the implied censure, +‘though we ain’t workpeople, we don’t take our pleasures so often that +we should hold ourselves in when we do, lest we should disturb them as +has no business save pleasure.’</p> + +<p>It was true enough, and it was also true that here was an instance +of Englishmen’s not taking their pleasure sadly. After all, it was a +mere ebullition of excitement at starting, so far as the seniors were +concerned. Very soon such <span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>members of the party as old Dadd and Mrs. +Polley subsided into sobriety, verging on drowsiness and tartness, +although their manners might not have the repose</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="center"> + Which stamps the class of Vere de Vere. + </p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>But it was in the very height of the outburst, when Fan looked as if +she could have crept beneath her seat to hide her diminished head, and +Oliver drew down on himself the accusation of being ‘a glum sort,’ +that the omnibus rattled past the Meadows, and revealed near the +gate, through the vista of thick shrubs, Mrs. Hilliard throwing up +her plump white hands in comic protest at the glare and blare of the +cavalcade, with the share taken in it by her cousins—half a dozen +times removed. For of course as Louisa Hilliard knew everything, she +had been made aware beforehand that Fan and Oliver were to be there. +She was stationed at the best point to get a passing glimpse of them. +She meant them to see her also, and she indulged <span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>in that gesture with +the mischievous intention of conveying to the brother and sister her +pretended opinion that they two were at the bottom of all that blazing +colour and deafening noise.</p> + +<p>Catherine Hilliard with her dogs stood just behind her cousin. She +had been lured to the spot without guessing what was to happen. She +was in the act of turning away with fretful impatience to avoid the +disagreeable shock of the spectacle. It was in violent antagonism to +the shadowy, stately world in which she lived, much as a group from +the crowded sands at Margate in the season is in opposition to a +trio from a Greek play. If she never interfered with the employments +and enjoyments of those human beings who had nothing in common with +her—save the same origin in the first, and, it was to be hoped, the +same interest in the second, Adam—why should they roughly intrude on +her notice, compelling her attention and summarily <span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>dissolving the +spell of memories and fancies which formed her refuge?</p> + +<p>When Finchhanger was reached, there was no time wasted in walking +about, though the day, which had begun by being doubtful, was turning +out fine. The dinner was the great event of the day, and till it was +accomplished successfully—nay, triumphantly, it was not to be thought +that any of the picnic party could care for anything else. Oliver, +while he cast a regretful glance on the fleeting lights and shades on +wood and water which his companions were overlooking, admitted the +reasonableness of the principle when a picnic without servants was in +question. He was thankful at least for the absence of false assumption. +He laboured to fall in with the requirements of the moment. He put +himself in the experienced hands of Jack Dadd, with the intention +of acting under him in the capacity of an amateur waiter, in spite +of Oliver’s peculiar disqualifications <span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>for that onerous office, +and though he had the mortification to receive regularly, after the +discharge of every two out of three commissions entrusted to him, a +plain dismissal, though it was couched in tones of jovial mockery and +recalled the next moment. ‘Get along with you, Constable, you are only +in a man’s way. Was that the style in which you handled plates and +knives at your University spreads? You must have been a rare blessing +to the crockery shops. I’m blowed if I know how you escaped losing +half your cutlery, or carving your own hands and feet. You had better +attempt to carry them with your toes, or in your teeth at once. My good +feller, you ought to have stuck to your books. You ain’t fit for the +ordinary business of life.’</p> + +<p>No fault could be found either with Fan’s qualifications or +behaviour—in so far as rendering every assistance with a fine capacity +and expertness which were in broad contrast to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span>Oliver’s helpless, +hopeless <i>gaucheries</i>. If she had only not been so much in earnest +in her work!</p> + +<p>‘Drat it!’ Jack Dadd broke out aside to ’Liza and ’Mily Polley, +who were languishing and romping over the tasks assigned them, not +showing a tithe of the power to become excellent table-maids which Fan +displayed. ‘I can’t stand Fan Constable, though she’ll have everything +put out in apple-pie order before we can say Jack Robinson. I wish she +would sit down. Ain’t she going about setting us an example how to mind +our businesses, as if we were all in shop or at Sunday-school? I’ll +throw a dish at her head before I’ve done,’—an extreme expression of +feeling which delighted his hearers immensely.</p> + +<p>But as Fan was very much in earnest at all times, Oliver could hardly +complain of her conduct in this instance, and certainly he could not +call her aside and reproach her for devoting <span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>herself for the rest of +the day to a girl far more delicate than ’Liza Polley, who had come out +in her anxiety not to lose the excursion when she was quite unfit for +the fatigue.</p> + +<p>Oliver had already made more than one private note to study at leisure +the amount of sickliness among the girls of his class in Friarton. He +was reluctant to ascribe any proportion of it worth mentioning to those +Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun illnesses which Mrs. Polley attributed +unhesitatingly to the sufferers having ‘tucked into’ stuffed goose and +plum pudding, ducklings and pancakes, the first pickled walnuts, sliced +cucumbers and greengage tarts, according to the season. ‘Girls—and +boys too for that matter—will take their treats without any thought of +the consequences,’ she said, referring to the mode in which dissenters +still emulate good church people in keeping those festivals which +their chapel ignores otherwise. But Oliver preferred to believe the +unsatisfactory <span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>bill of health was the result of a wilful and wonderful +ignorance of God’s laws of physical life in such elementary obligations +as have to do with fresh air, regular exercise, scrupulous cleanliness, +enough and suitable clothing, not too much food, together with a +sustaining interest and object in existence—even that subject to the +injunction to be temperate in all things.</p> + +<p>The evil effects of these neglected and outraged laws must be +intensified in the case of girls, whose indolent and self-indulgent +practices alternating with spasmodic exertions in any occupation they +could not possibly avoid or really cared about, and in the pursuit of +such pleasure as came in their way, exposed them to grave harm, which +men, by their established tasks and better balanced habits, avoided. +The aimlessness, with a single signal reservation, of these girls’ +lives tended also to mental vacuity and its train of disorders.</p> + +<p>There was only one disadvantage from <span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>which the average tradesmen’s +daughters of Friarton were happily exempted: that was the unsatisfied +craving, the wearing away and eating into itself, of such a nature as +Catherine Hilliard’s, over-stimulated and cultivated to the utmost, but +finding no essentially human food for its support, or field for its +exercise.</p> + +<p>Oliver could not blame Fan, though he could have wished her less grave +and absorbed in her philanthropy. At the same time he was sensible that +everybody, except Celia Reid, whom Fan was waiting upon, looked askance +at her present benevolence as at her previous diligence. ‘It ain’t +natural in a girl to come out for a day’s pleasure and shelve herself +at a moment’s notice, that she may nurse the first person as has a +headache or is sickified. She might have left that to one of the older +people. It is just like Fan Constable with her airs. We ain’t good +enough for her to enjoy herself with us, but she will play the Good +Samaritan for <span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>our benefit—set her up! Celia Reid is a mean-spirited +thing to give in and allow it. Could not she have stopped at home +rather than afford Miss Fan a back-door to get out of, that she might +not feel obliged to be free and pleasant like the other girls?’</p> + +<p>Oliver clearly comprehended the judgment that was passed on Fan’s +sister-of-mercy performance; but he had no idea that he, with his eyes +open and a very different disposition towards the company, ran any risk +of being indicted for a similar offence.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI"> + CHAPTER XVI. + <br> + <span>THE MIDDLE AND END OF THE FEAST.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">It</span> was Oliver Constable’s misfortune that he could no more make a +speech, unless under high pressure, than he could dance a minuet; so +that when there was toast-giving chiefly to thank old Dadd, who sat at +the foot of the table-cloth, and the matron who presided at the head, +Oliver went through a halting, stuttering formula, at the expense of +a good deal of colloquial Saxon, common-sense, and mother wit, thus +failing again ignominiously—this time in the very help which his +companions considered they had a right to expect at his hand, or rather +mouth. A fluent speech, well garnished with Latin quotations <span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>which +nobody would have understood, might have lent an <i>éclat</i> to this +part of the day’s programme, and carried off some of the tedium. If a +young man who had received Oliver’s education, could not deliver such +a speech, his friends had a right to be disappointed, aggrieved and +disgusted—especially as Oliver, by moving to secure the attendance of +the old fogies at the picnic, had brought down upon the more juvenile +members of the company the revival of an obsolete rite, which nobody +relished save old Dadd, who entertained the delusion that he was good +at a funny speech. The result of Oliver’s incompetency here, was as if +he had got his associates into a trap and left them in the lurch.</p> + +<p>There Constable sat, after his disgraceful break-down, with his long +legs very much in their owner’s, as well as in everybody else’s way, as +mute as a fish. When Mr. Dadd succeeded in introducing, in a sentence +of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>his reply to the sorry compliment which had been paid to him, a +handsome reference to a pair of young friends as had not always been +present at their blow-outs—but better late than never—and he could +wish no happier thing to the young gentleman and lady than that they +might be speedily provided with partners both at home and abroad, +Oliver, carefully refraining from a glance at Fan and with all eyes +fixed on himself, was content to utter a curt ‘Thank you,’ while +he held up his glass before his reddened face so clumsily that he +occasioned a diversion by pouring half the wine down Mrs. Dadd’s silk +sleeve. She was so humble that she would not allow him to do what he +could to remedy the accident, but of course there was a stain just +above the elbow. Anyone with half an eye might see how much she was +annoyed, from the way in which her husband, who could read her looks, +interrupted his speech, by pulling out his handkerchief and offering +it to her to rub the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>spot, while he remarked in a half-audible aside +to his next neighbours that he and Jack would not hear the end of that +’ere stupid accident of Constable’s, till they forked out another silk +gown to mother, when by rights Constable the villain ought to pay the +piper.</p> + +<p>Constable would willingly have paid the piper if he had known how to +do it, without implying patronage and offence. It was the last of his +thoughts to act as a kill-joy at the picnic. He strove with the usual +failure of such striving to be social. He could not make a speech +fit for the occasion, but to Fan’s disdain he was one of the first +to consent to sing in his fairly tuneful voice. He chose advisedly +the pretty old people’s-song, ‘The Lass of Richmond Hill.’ But his +choice of a song proved one of Oliver’s many failures with the best +intentions. If the lass were ever meant for such an audience, all its +younger members at least had grown away from her influence. They had +as little appreciation <span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>of her attractions as of her designation. +The ‘young ladies’ present would not have relished the word ‘lass’ +applied to any of them, and would not have cared to be admired for such +hum-drum and homely qualities as those which had inspired the poet. The +greater portion of the listeners barely freed Oliver Constable from the +injurious suspicion of singing down to their standard, while they took +care to express a little supercilious surprise at his taste in songs, +and to talk of this particular specimen as ‘an old-fashioned thing’ +with no ‘go’ in it. He would have done a great deal better if he had +made fools of them by offering them the old doggrel of the mad scholar, +which Jack Dadd had somehow picked up, and which he flung at Oliver +with a mocking ‘Look here, Constable, I’ll tip you a college stave.’</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="center"> + Amo, amas,<br> + I love a lass,<br> + And she’s both tall and slender:<br> + In the nominative case, with a cowslip’s grace,<br> + And she’s in the feminine gender. + </p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p> + +<p>That rant brought down a round of applause, while the gentle charm of +the ‘Lass of Richmond Hill’ fell flat.</p> + +<p>There was a little of the freedom of manner which Fan had indicated at +the close of the meal, either because the serious business of the day +being well over, there was a reactionary tendency to frolicking, or for +the alarming reason that old Dadd’s champagne had proved exceptionally +heady and had taken extraordinary effect on heads not accustomed to the +potation.</p> + +<p>’Mily Polley had kept the ‘merry thought’ of her wing of a fowl to +pull with Jack Dadd, and when she failed to secure the longer half of +the bone, she was so left to herself as to toss her share into Jack’s +waistcoat. Jack was still farther left to himself, though it was only +a rose which he plucked from his button-hole and aimed at her ducked +head. However, the precedent was ominous and the selection of missiles +might not have continued so judicious.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span></p> + +<p>Fortunately Mr. Holland succeeded in establishing a humorous clerical +veto. ‘Come, come, you young people,’ he protested affably, ‘you must +not take to throwing about things. It ain’t safe. How do you know but +you might catch me in the eye? It would be a pretty job if I had to +appear with a black eye in your chapel pulpit on Sunday. I ain’t sure, +though all my deacons are here, that I should escape censure.’</p> + +<p>‘Hang it,’ muttered the dissentient voice of Jack Dadd amidst the +clamorous approval of the joke, ‘what though we bunged up both his +eyes, if he means to sit upon us now. We ain’t priest-ridden Pussyites.’</p> + +<p>In reality Jack cherished no evil feeling towards his pastor, only +the young fellow looked upon it as manly and swellish to express a +certain amount of defiance of clergymen and contempt for their order. +He liked to shock those of his fair companions who regarded sacerdotal +pretensions <span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span>more respectfully, but who had no objections to being +shocked into crying out at such a culprit as Jack Dadd.</p> + +<p>Oliver valiantly fought against pronouncing a judgment on the little +interlude, by comparing it in his own mind to what Horace Walpole has +described of a scrimmage he witnessed in a box at Vauxhall or Ranelagh +between the members of Lady Petersham’s party, after supper. Only a +hundred years ago such incidents occurred in public among the leaders +of the great world, and, at the worst, ’Mily Polley was a thousand +times less objectionable than the disreputable fine-lady, and Jack +Dadd than her drunken profligate squires. Oliver would certainly point +out to Fan the analogy between the scenes, emphasising the fact that a +certain Bohemian picturesqueness—and blackguardism belonging to the +first, were lacking in the second.</p> + +<p>As the afternoon sun still shone, and only a light south-western +breeze tempered the heat <span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>gratefully, even the greatest devotees to +dancing and the barn among the company found themselves reluctantly +compelled to take advantage of the unwonted favour shown to them by +the weather, and to forego still their favourite resource. The party +was a picnic, ostensibly an out-of-doors party when the state of the +sky would permit, and there remained so much unvitiated simplicity and +matter-of-factness among its members as to deter them from behaviour +out of keeping with their professed purpose.</p> + +<p>There might be considerable inconvenience in carrying it out, such as +was involved in the obligation of the presence of the volunteer band, +Mr. Dadd’s tendency to lumbago, Mrs. Polley’s fears of cricks in the +neck, and the common lively irrational horror of the whole insect world +with the exception of butterflies, another relic of the prejudices +of the company’s betters in the past; but since the clouds would not +collect—strange reluctance—or the fine <span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>weather break-down, these men +and women were prepared to go manfully and womanfully through their +parts, with a kind of heavy loyalty.</p> + +<p>The seniors sauntered aimlessly here and there, sat uncomfortably on +the tree stumps, staring at nothing, and only waxed animated when +everyday interests came to the surface in their desultory conversation. +Oliver caught snatches of old Dadd’s harangue on the fall in calicos +and Mrs. Polley’s animadversion on the rise in lemons—together with +the complaints of all the men of the sauciness of apprentices, and of +all the women of the incompetency of maids-of-all-work, between stray +notes of robins, the rustle of falling leaves, and the trickle of +water. Oliver wished with all his heart that the undertones of nature +which her guests had come out to hear, had been more attended to, +and had risen loud enough to drown the clatter of trade. As it was, +he rather admired the elderly people’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>politeness in veiling their +impatience for tea, the second gipsy meal of those who were so unlike +gipsies, and concealing the alacrity with which they should start on +the homeward drive.</p> + +<p>The juniors played games and danced under difficulties on the uneven +ground, among the long grass, to the fife and drum band. Oliver could +not screw up his courage to the point of attempting such precarious +polking, while Fan continued engrossed with her opportune patient. But +Fan’s brother exerted himself to play for two in blind-man’s-buff, +till the players, tired of the sport, found more scope for amusement +in perpetrating audacious thefts on the articles of apparel their +companions had laid aside in order to join in the dance or the game +with comfort and spirit—the victims making frantic efforts to recover +their lost property.</p> + +<p>Oliver could not be guilty of the liberty Jack Dadd took in possessing +himself of a girl’s hat and veil, sticking it on his own head and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>proving what a vagabond-looking young woman he would have made, as +he rushed here and there, through the wood, pursued by the owner of +the hat. When another girl ventured to pull out a glove which had been +dangling from Oliver’s pocket, he suffered her to keep it, possibly +more to her surprise than her satisfaction. It was pure child’s play, +but Oliver had grown too old and modest in his civilisation to be +able for child’s play, at which both players and lookers on, to his +discomfiture, ‘laughed consumedly.’</p> + +<p>Poor Oliver! his was an anxious and thankless office which he had +assumed at his own charges, and Fan’s earnestness, threatening to +become a family quality, infected him in its discharge. Harry Stanhope, +<span id="cor9"></span>who was no reformer, would have impartially scattered merry-thoughts +and posies, purloined girls’ attire and pranked himself in it, when he +saw it was the humour of his neighbours, without a scruple and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>with +considerable diversion to himself in the process.</p> + +<p>To cover his shy withdrawal Oliver was betrayed into committing his +cardinal mistake at the picnic. He stumbled unconsciously into what +all those present regarded as Fan’s track. There were two plain +retiring elderly women of the party whom the majority of its members +reckoned decidedly beneath their rank. But the Miss Barrs were +respectably connected, they had always been at the excursion, and they +were undoubtedly proprietresses of a green-grocer’s shop, not merely +grey-headed shop girls. Oliver was first attracted to them by their +comparative isolation in the crowd, and then by the circumstance that +one of the sisters was quietly searching for, and gathering, a nosegay +of such aromatic wild flowers as summer spares, not merely picking a +few at random and dropping them carelessly the next moment, while she +was far past the age of coquettishly <span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>disposing of the last stray rose, +or plume of the queen of the meadow, in the demure bonnet which she +wore instead of a smart hat.</p> + +<p>Oliver was reminded of his baker who had the sneaking kindness for +butterflies. He actually introduced himself to Miss Nancy Barr, and it +compensated for a good deal which had jarred upon him in the course of +the day, when he made the agreeable discovery that Miss Nancy really +had considerable knowledge of wild flowers and a genuine regard for +them. She had once lived with an uncle who had been a schoolmaster +endowed with a love of nature and botany, she was tolerably well +acquainted not only with the general appearance and properties of +plants, but with old superstitions and lingering traditional virtues +attached to them. She was a fairly intelligent woman, especially on +this subject, which was akin to her walk in trade, and when Oliver made +use of the old poet’s words,</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘These flowers white and red</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Such that men callen Daisies in our town,’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="flat">she brightened up and said she had heard her uncle read those lines. He +found she was further familiar with the flowers summoned to lament the +friend of John Milton who bade the ‘daffodillies’ fill their cups with +tears; and she could herself repeat part of the catalogue of herbs in +Shenstone’s Schoolmistress’s garden:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The tufted basil, pun-provoking thyme,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fresh balm and mary-gold of cheerful hue,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The lowly gill that never dares to climb.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Oliver was as much amazed and elated as if he had encountered one of +the ‘mute inglorious Miltons’ so often referred to. In the innocence +of his heart he proceeded to cultivate the acquaintance of ‘a rational +human being,’ as he called her, rendering the process conspicuous by +sundry darts into the wood, and dives down to the brink of the Brook, +as his eye was caught by a specimen of winter-green or horehound <span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>which +he could procure for her. She was a plain elderly woman, quite old +enough to be his mother. She and her sister had appeared neglected at +the picnic, a circumstance which was in itself a patent reason for such +small atonement as lay in the power of Oliver or any other promoter of +the feast. But if he could only have realised it, the social reformer +had placed himself under a tyranny as great as any he could encounter +in this world. A glare of light like that on a throne was cast on all +he did. A score of eyes, which did not seem to be seeing him, were, in +fact, recording his every action and commenting on it, weighing him in +the balance and finding him wanting.</p> + +<p>‘I do believe Constable is low-lifed,’ said ’Mily Polley to Jack Dadd, +borrowing Jack’s masculine use of the surname where his friend was +concerned; ‘or is he stuck-up, after all, like Fan? Is this to show us +he is condescending from the highest to the lowest, and it may as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>well +be the lowest to prove the depth of his condescension? Good gracious! +to think of his paying attention to an old frump like Turnips.’</p> + +<p>‘It is a queer taste,’ said Jack lazily, while he lolled on the bank by +the lady’s side.</p> + +<p>‘I can tell you,’ said ’Mily in confidence, ‘I don’t think it’s the +best of usage to our ’Liza, whom he’s letting walk about with only +Bella Willet, after he has given us some cause to think he was making +up to ’Liza.’</p> + +<p>‘Serve ’Liza right for jumping at a newcomer because of his college +education, as has only made a donkey of him to begin with, and because +he has got hold of his father’s business and tin, which, as sure as +I live, he’ll make ducks and drakes of before he dies,’ said Jack +sardonically.</p> + +<p>But after Jack had gloated a little longer on the edifying spectacle of +’Liza’s discomfiture in being reduced to the company of one of her <span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>own +sex, while she underwent the double humiliation of seeing ‘Turnips’ +preferred to her, his good-nature led him to quit ’Mily, who was at no +loss to find a substitute for her attendant, and go to ’Liza, though +his sympathy took the doubtful form of teasing her with chaff about +her rival. Still, ’Liza had the comfort of being quits in the end with +Oliver, who remained profoundly ignorant of the whole by-play.</p> + +<p>It was one of the established customs of the day at Finchhanger that +those girls—not tom-boys and pickles, or humbler cynics like ’Mily +Polley, who held the practice in strong contempt as strictly belonging +to idiots of shop girls and low lads of Sunday-school teachers—should +bring back rural trophies from the picnic, in fast-withering, +limply-dangling wreaths of oak leaves and ferns, obscuring and +imperilling the real gum flowers in the girls’ hats. Sometimes an +obliging young man consented to have his hat or cap—in the band of +which he would on <span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>other occasions rollickingly stick his pipe or +railway ticket—similarly decorated by willing if bungling fingers, +with such spoils as Ophelia gave her life for. And it was Oliver who, +at this picnic, under the severe eyes of Fan—supporting Celia Reid’s +head on her shoulder to prevent her patient from fainting away—weakly +submitted to ’Liza Polley, with recovered spirits, decking his miller’s +hat with briony. He was thinking of the summer roses round his +mill-house window, and of what he had counted his only opportunity of +being crowned like an ancient Greek. But Mrs. Polley began pursing up +her mouth, and even Polley looked knowing and important.</p> + +<p>As for ’Mily, she asked Jack Dadd if it was to be his turn next, and +Jack answered with more plainness than politeness that he would not +make such an ass of himself.</p> + +<p>‘Like Bottom the weaver,’ said Oliver, with reckless waste of simile.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span></p> + +<p>‘Well, it is more in the way of rubbish of weavers than of any fellers +that I have been accustomed to keep company with,’ said Jack loftily, +giving Oliver a lesson in good manners. In spite of it, and of his +self-consciousness, Oliver wore the hat and its ill-arranged garniture +with an excellent assumption of composure on the return to Friarton.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII"> + CHAPTER XVII. + <br> + <span>AGNETA STANHOPE.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Before</span> the autumn had well begun, while the Stanhopes flattered +themselves they were like the other farmers in the heat of harvest +work, their only sister was permitted to come on a visit to them at +Copley Grange Farm, and she entered into the situation with girlish +relish equal to, though different from, Harry’s.</p> + +<p>Agneta Stanhope’s seventeen years of life had been dull and monotonous, +and apart from the ordinary experiences of girlhood, though she had +suffered no outward privations during their progress. The childless +aunt who had volunteered to take the little girl in charge, had <span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>been +faithful according to Mrs. Stanhope’s light. She had taken care to +provide <span id="cor10"></span>Agne—that her own expense certainly—with a good governess and +skilled masters. Mrs. Stanhope had been conscientious in making it a +point that the child should have every material comfort, and she and +her governess had shared all the advantages, which Mrs. Stanhope held +fit for them, that could be derived from General Stanhope’s position +and income. Agneta had always been duly recognised as the niece and +adopted daughter of the house, whether in town or country. She had even +found a little establishment formed for her own especial well-being at +the seaside, when other children were sent there. In short, Agneta had +been treated with perfect humanity and consideration, and could lay +no claim to being the persecuted, neglected orphan child of romance. +But the General and his wife were neither of them particularly fond of +children, though they did not call the grapes which had <span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span>not been given +to them sour. Accepting with philosophic adaptability the lot which +they regarded as assigned to them, they replaced private by public +interests. The couple went much into society and travelled a great +deal. They were spirited, intelligent, liberal-minded in a conventional +way, decidedly popular, and overwhelmed with engagements.</p> + +<p>To such a pair, though they fulfilled their obligations to Agneta in a +perfectly honourable well-bred manner, the child and girl was of small +account—at least till she was old enough to come out formally, go into +company with her guardians, and obtain the establishment which Mrs. +Stanhope felt bound to put in her way.</p> + +<p>Indeed, Agneta had seen as little of her uncle and aunt as was +compatible with their relations. She had spent nearly the whole of +her short life in schoolrooms, within the confines of a park and a +few neighbouring lanes, or in the narrower bounds of West-end squares +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>and gardens—on marine parades, or occasionally for a change on the +promenades of foreign watering places. She had been largely consigned +to the companionship of an unexceptionable elderly governess, who had +become a martinet, with the most of any originality or spirit she +had ever possessed pressed out of her by the exigencies of a long +and toilsome professional career. It was little wonder that Miss +Dennison, though she was all that her certificates proclaimed her +and Mrs. Stanhope’s fancy painted her, as a well-born, well-bred, +well-principled woman, whose solid education had not been entirely +neglected, while her French accent was that of a native, and her music +and drawing those of an accomplished amateur, proved still not a +congenial companion for a girl whose heart was stirring and fluttering +with the ardent impulses of that spring-time, which when repressed into +a walk is all the readier the next moment to break out in a gallop. +Indeed <span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>Miss Dennison was chiefly concerned—so far as the duties of +her office would allow—with securing the ease and rest which she had +laboriously earned.</p> + +<p>It happened also that there were few contemporary young people among +those branches of Agneta Stanhope’s father’s and mother’s families, the +heads of which troubled themselves, amidst the distractions of modern +life, to remember her existence and send her invitations to spend some +of her holidays in their circles.</p> + +<p>Beyond her family connections, there was an embargo laid by Mrs. +Stanhope, and especially by Miss Dennison, in her increasing +scrupulousness and dislike to interruptions of her routine, on juvenile +friends for Agneta, beyond a very select few, until the girl grew up +with hardly a playfellow or intimate companion save her brothers, who +had only been with her at brief intervals, separated by long spaces of +time.</p> + +<p>The visits of Harry and Horry at the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>General’s had been the bright +spots in Agneta’s life which had aroused the young humanity in her and +kept it from stagnation. To Harry especially she had owed the greatest +enjoyments in keeping with her years which she had ever known. Harry, +a manly little fellow from childhood, had always been rather fond +and proud of his younger sister, and had shown himself as careful of +her, and indulgent to her, as could be expected from his habitual +thoughtlessness, though he had never dreamt of ranking her with Horry +in his regard, or supposing that he owed to her the same allegiance. He +and Horry had never been sundered. Horry was in a measure necessary to +Harry, as Harry was to Horry, while Agneta had merely proved a pet and +play-thing now and then, and, after all, was but a girl, who belonged +by rights to Aunt Julia and the General—not to the lads.</p> + +<p>Horace, in his infirmity with its attendant jealousy, had been tempted +to look upon Agneta <span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>as an interloper between him and his brother, and +it had only been Harry’s staunchness to both which had preserved the +fraternal bond intact in either case. Harry was the medium, not only of +communication—seeing that Horry peevishly complained he could never +hear his sister’s soft treble voice—but of such mild family affection +as subsisted between the other two.</p> + +<p>Most girls in Agneta Stanhope’s class would find it difficult to +conceive that a fortnight’s stay with her brothers, in the rusticity of +their new estate, could be a treat of treats to Agneta, having all that +was wanting to render it ‘perfectly exquisite,’ in the extravagance of +her girlish speech, supplied by the misfortune of Miss Dennison’s being +attacked by influenza on the eve of their setting out, and so prevented +from accompanying her pupil. ‘Poor dear old Madam Punctilio, as Harry +wickedly nicknames her,’ reflected Agneta gleefully; ‘she would +undoubtedly have been in the way and spoiled so much. Since <span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>she is in +no danger and is not suffering particularly, while she misses nothing +by being detained in her comfortable quarters at Thornley Lodge and +escaping the worse than bachelors’ housekeeping at the Farm, it is not +cruel, is it? to be a little glad that she has become so opportunely +ill?’</p> + +<p>Unfortunately Mrs. Stanhope had not anticipated the possibility of +the accident, when she consented, with considerable hesitation and +reluctance, to allow Agneta to go to her brothers for a couple of weeks.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Stanhope could not bring herself to separate entirely +the members of the same family, though Harry and Horace had been +disappointing in failing to develop any faculties their friends could +lay hold of, to push them on in the world, and in the stupid lads’ +obstinately sticking to each other, so as to make matters worse, until +this miserable <i>dernier ressort</i> of a farm had to be tolerated for +them, still the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>young men had not done anything which could warrant +their aunt in forbidding their sister to visit them. As an habitual +practice, of course, living with her brothers in their primitive +establishment, was not to be thought of for Agneta. Her prospects +must be considered in the first place; her time was not to be wasted. +But she had not yet come out, she had not gone far beyond the point +when childhood and girlhood meet. If ever the liberty were to be +permitted, here was the opportunity when she would incur the least +observation, and run the slightest risk. For Miss Dennison would still +be responsible, since it would be as her pupil, in her charge, that +Agneta should go to Copley Grange Farm. And very likely a single trial +of the life on which her brothers had resolved—a species of Robinson +Crusoe isolation—rather than any steep decline into a lower stratum +of society, in Mrs. Stanhope’s mind, would rob the girl of any farther +inclination to go to them.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span></p> + +<p>When the expedition was about to start into the wilds, and Miss +Dennison broke down against all calculation, Mrs. Stanhope was heavily +hampered by the nature of her own engagements. It was an impossibility +for her to sacrifice herself and them, so far as to undertake to +chaperon Agneta and countenance Harry and Horace, even for the matter +of a couple of days, in their yeoman establishment, where she knew her +presence must create the greatest disturbance. She could not attempt +another compensating alteration in the programme. She did not see +herself warranted in anticipating Agneta’s entrance on the great world, +and her career, by carrying her niece with her for the gaieties of a +race week, to which Mrs. Stanhope and the General were pledged.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanhope, in the hurry of the dilemma, seemed to see herself +compelled to send Agneta, to the girl’s unbounded delight, to Copley +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>Grange Farm, under no more qualified escort than that of a steady old +waiting-maid.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanhope’s chief dependence was on the brothers’ having sufficient +<i>esprit de corps</i>, where their sister was concerned, to look after +her when she was with them. Then Agneta, in her own person, was not so +destitute of dawning discretion as to run straightway into mischief +for the short interval of time during which she was to be Harry and +Horace’s guest.</p> + +<p>The very first use which Harry made of his guardianship was to carry +Agneta to Friarton Mill. ‘I have brought over my sister Aggie to you, +Miss Constable, that you may be a friend to her also,’ said Harry in +his winning way, which was not so much graciously affable as frankly +confiding in the friendliness of his kind.</p> + +<p>Fan was more than proud and pleased, she was deeply gratified by the +trust, and grateful for it. It raised her in her own estimation, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>she was satisfied it would elevate her in that of others. If Harry +Stanhope chose to commit his young sister to the care of Fan—of all +people—during Agneta Stanhope’s stay at the Farm, it showed not only +his conviction of Fan’s claims to be a gentlewoman, it proved to Fan +that her own instincts of ladyhood had been correct and genuine.</p> + +<p>As for Agneta, she went into still greater raptures over lovely old +Friarton Mill than over the quaint antiquated farmhouse. She privately +included Miss Constable, who had been so good to Agneta’s ‘boys,’ who +was such a nice, pretty, quiet-looking little woman in her mourning, +in her enthusiastic admiration. Miss Constable was quick to guess +her—Agneta’s—wishes, and was evidently going to be very kind to +her. With regard to the big, awkward, but gentlemanlike—Agneta knew +a gentleman when she saw him—master of the house, whom Harry was so +impertinent as to call to his face ‘the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>Miller,’ he was even a more +wonderful novelty than his sister.</p> + +<p>Agneta prized all the enchanting wonder, strangeness, and freedom of +the new world she had entered, with the vivid appreciation of a girl +who had been kept strictly in leading-strings all her days, who had +followed one narrow, worn path till it was direly commonplace and stale +to her, who, in the middle of a continual round of book-teaching, was +as profoundly ignorant of the work-a-day world, and the struggling, +suffering, rejoicing, sorrowing life lived on every side of her, as if +she were a novice in a convent parlour.</p> + +<p>To rise two or three hours before her accustomed time the one day, to +have breakfast standing on the parlour table till noon the next—since +Harry was fitful, to say the least, in his practices of getting up +and taking his meals—formed an agreeable variety on Miss Dennison’s +petrified virtues of punctuality and method. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>To be invested with the +important functions involved in pouring out coffee for Harry and Horry +was flattering to Agneta’s still starved vanity. To have no tasks in +Ariosto, Corneille, and Schiller—which, though custom enabled her to +get through them glibly, the absence of all student affinities rendered +irksome—was a sensible relief to her. Instead, Agneta could dawdle in +the porch or in the shadow of the great pear-tree in the paddock, and +read one of Harry’s red-and-yellow railway-stall volumes. She could not +dip far into it, certainly, without noticing that it was as horribly +‘loud’ inside as out. But it was also new and exciting like everything +else on this untrodden ground. Its characters bounced and struggled +after a robust fashion, did not trip or stalk in a shadowy manner, as +the heroes and heroines of her classics had tripped and stalked to +Agneta.</p> + +<p>To be exonerated from practising was another huge boon to a girl who +was not intensely <span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>musical, and to whom the news that there was no +piano in the house sounded the best of jokes.</p> + +<p>The small, austerely plain farmhouse, with the ‘lean-to’ preserving +a venerable houseleek which flaunted over the greater portion of the +sloping roof, was out of all proportion to its large offices where they +stood massed together,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"> + ‘Warm with the breath of kine.’ + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>The voices of poultry resounded through the shaggy paddock. Cowslips +and primroses, as well as daisies, flourished in their season, among +the uncut grass, and the white buttons of mushrooms showed themselves +conspicuously among the seeded flowers and withered leaves of autumn.</p> + +<p>The dairy and kitchen were by far the largest rooms in the farmhouse, +so that Agneta felt justified in haunting them, even without the +inducement of playing at making butter and cheese, and baking home-made +bread, much as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>Harry and Horry played at cutting down and gathering in +sheaves, and driving home and stacking the corn. Agneta found another +excuse in hopeless endeavours to sketch the great open chimney-place, +and its clumsy oven piled round with billets of wood; or a section of +the dark beams of the low roof which Harry’s middle-aged housekeeper +had already hung again thickly, as of old, with red and white beef +and bacon, brown nets full of pale green onions, and bunches of olive +and sage-coloured pot-herbs; or the wooden trap stair which ascended +to a room above, that Harry, like a true farmer, had immediately +appropriated to himself because it lacked a partition on the kitchen +side, and from the narrow elevated platform, looking down into the +yawning gulf beneath, Harry was supposed to inspect and address his +farm servants assembled of a morning, to give in their reports and +receive his orders.</p> + +<p>Of course there was no accommodation in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>either of the two tiny +parlours for morning callers, or dinner guests—who must have come to +dine before they came to call, or so much as had lunch—a topsy-turvy +reversal of all household arrangements hitherto known to Agneta, which +fascinated her like every other unapprehended possibility of primitive +housekeeping. As to an evening party, with hired music, dancing, ices +and supper anywhere else save spread like a gipsy tea on the rough +grass of the paddock, Agneta laughed the low tuneful laugh which was +almost as purely gleeful as Harry’s, at the mere absurdity of the +picture conjured up by the imagination.</p> + +<p>But who wanted morning callers, or the wittiest diners-out, such as +Agneta had heard her Aunt Julia talk of, or even the best waltzer in +London—whom anybody could have, so soon as she was presented and came +out—down here at Copley Grange Farm with the boys in their retreat? +Harry hunted for hens’ and ducks’ <span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>eggs with Agneta in the poultry +and straw yards and by the pond, just as he had formerly hunted +with her for blackbirds’ and chaffinches’ nests in the shrubberies +at Thornley Lodge. He took her, too, every day to his stables and +cowhouse, and he had promised she should milk a cow before she left. +He let her accompany him and Horry when the weather was fine to the +fields, and when it was bad to the barn, to watch the operations of the +thrashing-mill and fanners. He had helped her to climb up once beside +him, to a throne of sheaves in a corn-cart, and driven her in triumph +into the yard, which Agneta held for the moment to be much better than +occupying the box-seat on a drag, as most girls had an opportunity of +doing on some occasion in their lives.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"> + CHAPTER XVIII. + <br> + <span>OLIVER’S LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">The</span> next public appearance which Oliver made was in delivering a +lecture on Wordsworth in the town-hall, which was readily lent to any +respectable lecturer, native or foreign, who undertook to enlighten +or please the townspeople. Courses of lectures were not uncommon in +Friarton, though more frequently delivered in winter than at any other +season, but no tradesman had ever before stood at the lecturer’s desk +improvised for the occasion.</p> + +<p>Oliver could bring himself to read a lecture as he could sing a song. +He had read prize essays before an audience at once more <span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>critical and +a good deal more aggressive. Though Friarton did not form an exception +to the great rule of a man’s not being a prophet in his own country, +he was not likely to be bidden speak out and turn over his leaf by the +most sarcastic of his fellow-citizens.</p> + +<p>After much reflection, Oliver had come to the conclusion that a lecture +from him might be useful and acceptable, and he had wished to give it +at once that he might not interfere with the courses of lectures which +Mr. Fremantle and others were wont to read to select circles, generally +with some distinctly charitable or purely intellectual object in view, +from November to February.</p> + +<p>Besides, Oliver was reluctant to let the autumn pass without an attempt +to rouse those of his neighbours with whom he had cast in his lot +to take their share of the wealth which was free to them. After his +experience at the annual excursion, and at the Friarton <span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>floricultural +and horticultural show, where it was evident so much energy was spent +on raising Brobdingnag cabbages and roses, he suspected that the book +of nature, with all its higher teaching, was closed to his class even +beyond other classes. He wished to do what he could to show how much +good as well as beauty existed in the world simply for the taking, +and how deeply and vitally humanity was interested in the grand and +terrible, and fair and sweet framework around it. The pleasant little +episode of the discovery he had made in Miss Nancy Barr had influenced +him to a certain extent, but there must have been another less purely +public-spirited inducement muddling Oliver’s brains, or else, young +man of dreams and aspirations as he was—and to such an individual it +is hard to say what misconception is too grotesque and outrageous—he +could not have gone so wide of the mark as to choose Wordsworth of +all writers to fire <span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span>over the heads of his fellow-tradesmen. He might +more judiciously have selected the most difficult question of the +most difficult play of Shakespeare, the problem of the madness or +non-madness of Hamlet, the theory of the morality of Timon of Athens, +and offered it to those excellent people as a nut to crack. And Oliver +ought to have known, and did know, in a form of knowledge undigested +and unapplied—as it appeared in <span id="cor11"></span>this instance—that while ballad +literature is the first conscious intellectual effort of a people, in +genuine old ballads the references to nature are few and simple. It +is only when man is unconsciously in a state of nature, or when he is +in an advanced stage of culture, that he looks into nature as into a +mirror, and sees all humanity and the God of humanity reflected in it.</p> + +<p>The truth was, Oliver happened to be a young man in more than in +reforming zeal, and when he used Wordsworth as a weapon, he <span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>had, +whether he knew it or not, a private as well as a public end in his +mind, for which he burned to employ the philosophy of the chief of the +Lake school.</p> + +<p>When Oliver offered himself as lecturer, he was well enough received. +Mr. Fremantle and the rest of Oliver’s old patrons were positively +gracious in volunteering their support. Possibly, the manner in which +they had first taken up and then dropped their former <i>protégé</i> +for his fidelity to trade, had left a little compunction in their minds +which rendered them all the blander when an opportunity presented +itself for patronising him again without compromising their own +principles; though such jars occurred, as when Mr. Wright, intending to +be complimentary, suggested that Oliver might lecture in his university +hood and gown, to which the future lecturer answered bluntly, he saw no +good in that, he would as soon show himself in a cap and apron.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span></p> + +<p>The tradespeople, for once, were not offended that one of themselves +should do something which all the others could not do, and which they +were, therefore, generally pleased to taboo as out of their way. +Happily, they regarded Oliver’s purpose as a vindication of their +right to do as their customers did, to be as good as they were, nay, +a deal better. Because they were the great shopkeeping class with its +distinguishing virtues. The tradespeople were at once the thews and +sinews and the salt of the nation. They supplied alike its necessaries +and luxuries. There was ten times more capital spread over their +tills and banking accounts than was to be found in the pockets and +cheque-books of their professional brethren.</p> + +<p>The shopkeepers were the pillars of the pure dissenting churches. +It was largely by the votes of the lower middle-class that members +got into Parliament, so that it was by the shopkeepers—as they were +tempted to boast, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>without any idea of being profane—that ‘Kings +reigned, and princes dispensed justice.’ The shopkeeping ranks of +England, with their vigour, their substance, their stake in the +prosperity of the country, their stolid but supreme self-assertion, far +excelled in power (let the world be thankful) the brute force of the +great unwashed.</p> + +<p>The tradespeople of Friarton accepted Oliver as their champion for +the time being, and prepared to go <i>en masse</i> to hear him, +in order to show he was their lecturer. He was not to have a mere +handful of an audience, not even of the out-and-out gentry, but of the +shabby-genteel, such as <span id="cor12"></span>Mr. Fremantle was content to address. Oliver +was to air his abilities and their college training, demonstrating that +he was as far before a schoolmaster-parson like Fremantle in profane +scholarship, as the shopkeepers’ pastor, Mr. Holland, was in advance of +the clerk in holy orders in spiritual gifts.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span></p> + +<p>Old Dadd proved nearly the solitary defaulter. ‘I make a point, Mr. +Oliver, of attending no lectures save those in the chapel on Sunday +evenings,’ he explained. ‘Yes, yes, I understand you perfectly, sir, +that you are to speak after shop hours, but that is the very time when +I compare my invoices, make myself acquainted with the prices and read +anything else I care to see in the papers. Lectures ain’t in my line, +and I am too old a boy to take up with new courses, I leave ’em to the +young people. Mrs. Dadd—not that she is so much younger, as, like the +rest of the ladies, she would have us believe—and my son Jack will +represent the family for its credit and yours.’</p> + +<p>‘If you care to see me, Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Dadd, with her +propensity to make herself scarce.</p> + +<p>‘Of course he does,’ interrupted Jack; ‘even an old woman counts. You +can thump with <span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span>your umbrellar at the applause. Trust us for crying +you up to the skies, Constable,’ was the cheerful assurance of Jack, +who had never heard the verb <i>claquer</i>, or guessed its effect in +metropolitan theatres.</p> + +<p>‘If you’ll listen to me—that is all I want,’ said Oliver.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! if it’s the independent dodge, and standing on your own merits, +you’re after, we can be as quiet as mice,’ said Jack, a little offended +at the indifferent reception of his pledge.</p> + +<p>‘My dear, we are the most highly favoured of mortals,’ Mrs. Hilliard +told Catherine at dinner.</p> + +<p>‘Are we?’ asked Catherine, sceptically, looking at the partridge on her +plate, as if she lamented its early, piteous fate, and did not know how +to eat it.</p> + +<p>‘My great-cousin Oliver—his surname should have been Cromwell, not +Constable—will deign <span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>to hold forth for our benefit in the town-hall +on Tuesday evening.’</p> + +<p>‘What about?’ enquired Catherine without much interest, still picking +at her partridge as if she saw it flying over the stubble.</p> + +<p>‘How should I know? On the duty of girls taking bread-sauce and +pegging—not picking—at the food on their plates. I don’t know what +will become of you, child; you despise bread-sauce, you are too fine +for mint-sauce, and as for onion-sauce—to which I am base enough to +incline, though I do it in strict privacy, as you will bear me witness, +and avoid all respectable company for the rest of the day—I wonder you +can sit in the same room with it and me.’</p> + +<p>‘I am not fine,’ denied Catherine; then, returning to the charge with +a gleam of animation, ‘I should like to know what Oliver Constable is +going to lecture upon.’</p> + +<p>‘I should say on the model trader, whose <span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span>biography has been so often +written; the poor boy who finds a rusty horse-shoe, sells it for old +iron, and dies the possessor of the most perfect racing stud in the +kingdom.’</p> + +<p>‘That would not suit his views,’ objected Catherine.</p> + +<p>‘I dare say I have spoilt the example,’ said Mrs. Hilliard innocently; +‘and when one thinks of it, Oliver would have the boy gathering +horse-shoes till he was grey-headed, though in the interval he should +find time and opportunity to learn to read, clean himself, and use +a knife and fork. Of course he must take to moralising on the first +artificer in brass and iron, and find illustrations of the work of his +successors in the sword, the plough, and the pen—steel pens would come +in so nicely to finish the peroration. I should not be surprised, after +all, if the lecturer were to let the model trader alone—I am sure he +deserves a little rest—and give us the natural history of a bit of +bread, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>beginning with seed corn, and ending with—it ought not to be +a slice of loaf, a macaroon is a much higher and more artistic product +of the oven,’ said Mrs. Hilliard gravely, while she inspected carefully +through her eye-glass a plate of macaroons on the sideboard. ‘It will +be a revelation to Fan, who is said to live under the impression that +loaves grow somewhere, out of sight, behind the shop, doubtless, as the +bread-fruit tree flourishes in the South Sea Islands. You know she is +too good a Christian to fail to be aware that manna only fell from the +skies for a time, to the Jews, when Moses was leading them through the +wilderness.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t need such enlightenment, and I shall not go,’ said Catherine.</p> + +<p>‘What, not to hear Oliver exalt his vocation, and establish +satisfactorily that, without bread, we should all be cannibals again +soon, I suppose; for what with pleuro-pneumonia and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span><i>rinderpest</i>, +there would not be nearly enough animals left for us, and of those +which were left, we could not depend upon their wholesomeness and +appetising attractions. I should not like to try dogs and rats and +mice—not if I went to China to acquire the proper taste.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t care for exaggeration,’ said Catherine, with her customary +candour.</p> + +<p>‘Neither in sense, nor in nonsense, which means neither in the master +baker, nor in me. Well, I did hear Oliver was going to be quite +commonplace, and serve up some poet.’</p> + +<p>‘Which?’ enquired Catherine, with more curiosity than she had yet +displayed.</p> + +<p>‘Wordsworth. He is going to let us see what a primrose is when it is +more than a yellow primrose by the river’s brim and at the cottage +door, when it is in a spring bonnet. Why did Wordsworth not give the +last important position? It must have existed in his <span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>day, though +crewel work had not yet been revived. At present, I am certain our +principal considerations in reference to primroses, are how they will +look on the borders of table-covers, or on the pockets and bibs of +aprons.’</p> + +<p>‘Speak for yourself, Louisa,’ said Catherine, roused to indignation +as her cousin had meant her to be. ‘Some of us have still the grace +to think of primroses wet with dew, beneath green hedgerows, under +April skies. But I wish he had not chosen Wordsworth; I think he is a +mistake.’</p> + +<p>‘The greatest mistake possible, my dear.’ Mrs. Hilliard confirmed the +opinion with alacrity. ‘Quite an anachronism. He ought to have been a +typical burgher, like those Flemish cloth-workers in the middle ages.’</p> + +<p>Catherine stared for a second with wide-open blue eyes. ‘Oh!’ she +drew a long breath; ‘I did not mean Oliver Constable, I <span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span>was speaking +of Wordsworth. Of course he wrote some very beautiful things,’ she +continued gravely. ‘Surely his greatest opponent would not willingly +lose his ’Ode to Immortality.’</p> + +<p>‘I cannot dignify myself by calling myself a poet’s greatest opponent, +I am such a mere mortal. And I confess I never read the ode; the less +loss to me, that I am sure I should not understand a word of it,’ said +Mrs. Hilliard, with undisturbed complacency, as she helped herself to +grapes.</p> + +<p>Catherine was not listening. She was getting more and more into the +habit of not attending to a great deal of the conversation around her, +and looking as if she were speaking to invisible hearers. ‘I could +never speak of Wordsworth as Macaulay and Madame Bunsen wrote,’ she +went on in answer to her own thoughts, as if they had been audible +remarks. ‘Indeed, I cannot forgive them for it.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span></p> + +<p>‘Catherine, have you forgotten your catechism?’ remonstrated Mrs. +Hilliard; ‘and I dare say poor Macaulay and Madame Bunsen did not +understand Wordsworth any more than I should have done.’</p> + +<p>Catherine paid no heed to the interruption, and showed that spoken +soliloquy is still natural to some people. ‘Yet I believe there is a +great deal of truth in the criticism that Wordsworth sacrificed his +powers to an intellectual hobby, and brought down poetry to tedious, +if rather fine prose, by insisting on idealising the tritest, most +wretchedly dull subjects, though I suppose he would have said nothing +is either trite or dull when rightly looked at. Upon the whole I prefer +Crabbe. There was method in his madness. He was more dramatic, if he +idealised less.’</p> + +<p>‘I wish there was method in your madness, and that you idealised less. +Do you hear, Catherine? Will you have grapes?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span></p> + +<p>‘Yes, thanks. I am going to take back my word, Louisa; I should like to +hear Oliver Constable’s lecture.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course you would. All the world, including the great shopkeepers, +will be there. I, for one, would not miss the lecture on any account, +though I expect no more edification than I shall get from observing +Mrs. Fremantle looking suavely over the heads of the Polleys and Dadds, +while every rustle of Mrs. Polley’s Sunday gown will deliver the +challenge, “I pay my way. I have as good a right to be here as any of +you. I can do without your custom if you like to take it away; my word! +you will miss me more than I shall miss you. Besides, Oliver Constable +is our man.” I say, Catherine, it cannot be that Oliver Constable is +flirting with one of those Polley girls? People say so, you know. +Now, I can stand a good deal, but one must stop somewhere, and I +really could not swallow that. The Constables are my own <span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>relations, +and Oliver and Fan have been educated like other people. Though they +are eccentric, they are presentable, and don’t take advantage of +kinship. But imagine what it would be to have Mrs. Polley claiming me +for a family connection, when, of course, I should have to admit the +claim, while her daughter addressed me as <span id="cor13"></span>‘cousin’. That would try my +liberal-mindedness.’</p> + +<p>Catherine showed herself a little startled when this suggestion was +deliberately made to her, but she looked it steadily in the face. ‘Why +not,’ she asked quietly a moment afterwards, ‘if the couple suit each +other? Oliver Constable must know, so far as it refers to himself. +Perhaps the Polleys are not so much worse than other girls.’</p> + +<p>In making the last despondent reflection, she was influenced by the +recollection of nieces of Mrs. Wright’s, whom Catherine Hilliard had +encountered lately, and whom she <span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>was accustomed to style to herself +‘low-minded girls,’ after she found that they divided their time pretty +equally between dressing, taking their meals, and playing lawn-tennis. +‘Are you liberal-minded, Louisa?’ Catherine began to speculate next.</p> + +<p>‘Don’t cross-question me,’ cried Mrs. Hilliard; ‘I won’t have one of +my own dining-room chairs converted into a witness-box. There are +liberal-mindedness and liberal-mindedness. The French, the wittiest +nation in Europe, invented that splendid definition. I am ready to +depose solemnly that I never professed to be a chartist or a communist +or a red republican—nothing of the kind. I only call myself a friendly +easy-going sort of woman, who would not condescend to turn her back on +her kindred, and who could not do without her neighbours to laugh with +and laugh at. Therefore she was not disposed to weed out her visiting +list at Friarton to a few straggling <span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>aspirants to gentility. But +if Oliver Constable commit a marriage with one of the Miss Polleys, +I shall turn my coat and become as exclusive as Mrs. Wright. Her +father was actually a fashionable London physician, who drove about +in a pill-box and attended peers and aldermen for their gout and fine +ladies and citizenesses for their nerves. Think how his daughter has to +condescend to us country clodhoppers! By the way, I may as well turn +my coat as you take back your word. I am glad, my love, that you do +anything so nineteenth century and fallible—so unlike a vestal virgin +or a <i>précieuse ridicule</i>.’</p> + +<p>Oliver was taking one step to which Fan had no objection.</p> + +<p>Harry Stanhope, with a curious echo of old and young Dadd, told Oliver: +‘I say, old man, lectures ain’t in my way, as you know, but I’ll see +you through yours.’ Agneta also expressed her full intention of being +present. But as it <span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span>happened, when the evening came, no Stanhope put in +an appearance. They had been decoyed away by some prospect of greater +entertainment elsewhere. Agneta admitted afterwards that she had left +the schoolroom too lately to relish lectures, any more than Harry cared +for them.</p> + +<p>But in spite of the Stanhopes’ desertion, if Oliver’s sole or even +principal intention had been to bring together the upper and lower +middle classes of Friarton, and unite them superficially, by a common +bond of interest for one evening, he might have been satisfied. But +unfortunately, his aspirations went far beyond these modest results.</p> + +<p>The lecturer began stiffly with involuntary bodily contortions which +monopolised much of the attention, and were fruitful in small titters +and grins from the ’Mily Polleys and Jack Dadds among the audience. +Mrs. Hilliard neither tittered nor grinned. She looked preternaturally +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>sedate, but her grey eyes danced under the great flat expanse of her +forehead.</p> + +<p>Catherine Hilliard leant back in her chair perfectly unstirred +to mirth. Her hands were loosely clasped in her lap. A shade of +expectation kindled a little light in the face, which under its warmly +tinted hair looked like</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">That orbèd maiden,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">White—fire-laden,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whom mortals call the moon,</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="flat">walking in the night, or a flower blossoming in the shade. Yet +Catherine was not without a perception of comedy. She could laugh when +she could find anything laughable to her; the misfortune was, this +occurred seldom. For her sense of the ridiculous had not, by any means, +outgrown and dwarfed all her other faculties—a result which may be +found not only in old court fools and in many of the village imbeciles +of every generation, but also in a large number of men and women who +have special pretensions to wisdom and wit.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span></p> + +<p>When Oliver warmed with his subject, his gestures grew less and less +awkward, the tendency to grimace disappeared, and something of the +natural dignity of the man shone forth from his goodly physique.</p> + +<p>But alas! his audience did not warm with him, though the want of +sympathy, while it went to his heart, had not the power to damp his +enthusiasm so as to rob him of the advantage he derived from it. As +Oliver discoursed on the nobility and beauty which underlie all God’s +creation and are never utterly absent, however foully or meanly marred +in his fearful and wonderful handiwork man; as he bade his listeners +recognise the high heroism of a rude old Westmoreland shepherd; the +essential refinement of a bareheaded, barefooted, Highland girl; as +he urged them to examine and ascertain for themselves the exquisite +perfection of much they might be tempted to overlook, or undervalue +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>as trifles light as air, or as possessions too universal to be of the +slightest value, gaping impatience and scorn took the place of titters +and grins, with few exceptions.</p> + +<p>‘Did you ever hear such radical rant—praising them pedlars and leech +gatherers and the whole band of wandering vagabonds?’ Mrs. Polley +was moved to whisper to the daughter next her, during a pause in +the selection of some of the quotations with which the lecture was +graced. ‘I would not buy a reel of cotton from the one, or trust a +silver spoon within a mile of t’other of them tramps. I would never +have evened Oliver Constable to be guilty of this. I declare I begin +to be frightened of this here young man. Mark my words, Ann, he’ll +not stop where he has begun. It is fair impudence to deliver such a +lecture to well-to-do, respectable people. As for his trash about +birds’ eggs and daisies, why it is fit only for a parcel of children! +He’ll be proposing Polley <span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>and me to go a bird-nesting and threading of +daisy-chains next.’</p> + +<p>‘I would not say it to everybody, because Constable is a personal +friend,’ said Jack Dadd with ostentatious loyalty, ‘but I must +say I prefer a lecture in the chapel from the Dutchman when he’s +sending us all to pot. We mayn’t take the whole in, and it ain’t +agreeable—exactly, to be called bad names, though it’s what we bargain +for from a parson, but when he comes it strong and hot it is more +rousing. If this is what you call poetry, ’Liza, you and Constable may +keep it to yourselves and welcome.’</p> + +<p>‘But this ain’t what I call poetry,’ protested ’Liza, doubly wounded; +‘I never read anything like it. No poetry I ever heard of, or cared +for, could be about common old women and idiot boys. I have read about +outlaws and brigands, but they are out of the common as well as knights +and troubadours; I must say <span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>for myself, I always preferred lords +and ladies. As for lovers—and everybody knows most poetry is on the +tender passion—’ simpered ’Liza, ‘who would stop to hear how an old +married couple—like father and mother for instance, only a great deal +worse when you come to low clanjamphrey of weavers and shepherds, get +on or fall out? They are married for better, for worse, and must pull +together, and there’s an end of them.’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t object to father just now,’ said ’Mily, ‘for if he had not +fallen asleep—small blame to him—and snored so that I had to stuff +my handkerchief into my mouth to keep myself from laughing right out +every time he struck in, I should either have fallen asleep myself, or +I could not have sat to the end of the drone. Call this cleverness and +the good of a university education! Then I am glad I ain’t clever in +the same way and that I have not even been away at a boarding-school, +though I used to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>tease mother to send me from home—just for the name +of the thing. I should have hated the learning and snapped my fingers +in the schoolmistress’s face, I dare say, before I was done.’</p> + +<p>These open objections were the echo of the prevailing sentiments of a +large proportion of the audience. With regard to another section there +was decorous respect for Wordsworth. Public opinion has changed since +the criticism in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ was penned. Mrs. Hilliard was +singular in her freedom of speech—most people pretended or tried hard +to admire the poet, at least, while they strangled their tell-tale +yawns and came to the conclusion that Oliver Constable was casting +pearls before swine, the swine being the herd of tradespeople. Such +hearers sat through Oliver’s lecture with a commendable appearance of +attention. They knew what was due both to him and themselves, not to +say to Wordsworth, in their relative <span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span>positions. Only a fine sprinkling +of choice sympathisers—turning up sometimes, like Miss Nancy Barr, +when least expected—responded to the lecturer with all their hearts.</p> + +<p>But Catherine Hilliard was not in the last slender detachment any +more than in the others. She did not go with the multitude. Neither +could she be converted in an hour, though she realised that Oliver +woke up to his office, burst some of his bonds, and ended by lecturing +and speaking well. Certainly her lips fell a little apart in wistful +appreciation, and delicate light and colour came into the subdued +pallor of her face when he quoted</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"> + Lo! five blue eggs lie gleaming there, + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="flat">and called the daisy</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"> + A queen in crown of rubies drest; + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="flat">but she lacked full humanity, and could not follow him in his +fellow-feeling with Betty Foy and Peter Bell. She still thought +Wordsworth <span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>had made a huge mistake in his vocation, and that Oliver +Constable had capped him with a blunder as gross. Even if he would +choose Wordsworth, why did he not read from ‘The Horn of Egremont +Castle,’ or ‘The White Doe of Rylstone,’ as more fit for a popular +assembly than the ‘Ode to Immortality’ could be? No; Macaulay might +be deplorably intolerant in recording—were it for his private +satisfaction—the judgment he had formed, and Madame Bunsen might be +singularly inappreciative where such a woman was concerned, but there +was ground for their censure though none for their contempt. And Oliver +Constable would have done far better to have selected one of the ‘Lays +of Ancient Rome’—even with its classic story and unfamiliar names—for +Friarton ears.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX"> + CHAPTER XIX. + <br> + <span>AN ILLUSION.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver Constable,</span> watching the young aristocratic beauty Agneta +Stanhope masquerading with her brothers, thought of Marie Antoinette +essaying a Dresden china shepherdess’s life at Little Trianon. He +judged that Marie Thérèse’s high-spirited, frolicsome daughter, whose +fair-haired beauty, in its flower, was not without its buxomness, +princess and queen though she was, had less refined traits, so far as +he could make out from her early pictures, till terrible misfortune +lent the face tragic majesty, than were to be found in the pale, +delicately cut little features of this simply well-born English <span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span>girl +who had been brought up in the calculated shade, seclusion, and +exclusivism, of an aristocratic schoolroom, with only a formal walk, or +ride or drive for exercise, while she had remained totally uninitiated +in the swimming, rowing, and skating exercises which are beginning at +last to be allowed to diversify more elderly forms of ‘constitutionals’ +for the girls of the upper ten thousand. Agneta’s lawn games even had +been generally affairs of two, with one of the two what Harry would +have called ‘a confirmed duffer and fogy,’ while the girl’s early romps +with her schoolboy brothers had been few and far between.</p> + +<p>Agneta Stanhope was in perfect health of body and mind, yet she +appeared at Copley Grange Farm like a hothouse flower which had never +been exposed to sun or wind, while welcoming them with such a sweet +exultant wooing of their tanning, hardening influences, as added to +the grace of her ignorance and helplessness—such <span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>ignorance and +helplessness as charm in a gentle young foreigner who is all frankness +and guilelessness, and willingly makes herself at home in a hitherto +unexplored region, of which the rude simplicity alone is perceptible +to her. In such a <i>rôle</i> Agneta Stanhope was still more engaging +and interesting than beautiful. Indeed her greatest claim to beauty +lay in the air of exquisite tender fragility—which had to do with her +rearing, but not with her character, not even with her constitution, +in spite of her slight figure, which, however, was elastic and wiry +enough—and the sky-blueness of her eyes—like Harry’s, very unlike +Catherine Hilliard’s—set in a miniature face, the colour of which +inclined to that of a lily rather than of a rose, when she came +first, though a single week’s life with her brothers brought into +the soft cheeks a tinge of the red which qualifies the whiteness of +apple-blossom.</p> + +<p>It was really in all respects as if Agneta <span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span>Stanhope were visiting +her brothers in one of the distant colonies to which they had been +originally destined, though she was not reduced to washing her clothes +or baking her bread; certainly she would not have objected to these +sports in her ignorance of what they led to. On the one hand, she was +childishly ignorant, a creature who had never stood alone or thought +for herself, or been conscious of a single responsibility to her +fellow-creatures since she was born, while—like Catherine Hilliard +here—neither had she been of vital consequence to anybody, or been +cherished and petted, as might well have been the lot of such a girl +in different circumstances. She had suffered a curiously crippling +experience of life on two sides of her nature. On another, she was +precocious, and early instructed in obligations, necessities, and +experiences; but this element in her education and second nature was +not on the surface or readily perceived.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span></p> + +<p>Agneta was not likely, even if fortune in the person of her Aunt Julia +favoured her present wishes, to stay long enough at Copley Grange +Farm for yeoman life to pall upon her. And when she was wearied in +the least, she took refuge—the power of changing her place when and +how she liked was another allurement to her—with her own and her +brothers’ friends at Friarton Mill. Agneta could not draw the nice +lines of distinction which were so skilfully defined by the magnates of +Friarton. She was blind enough in her youthful obtuseness not to see +magnates in the town. What was the great difference between the master +of a grammar school who taught Latin or mathematics, the doctor who +felt pulses, the old established family solicitor and banker who drew +out wills and leases and counted sovereigns, even the vicar, who wrote +sermons and took a class in the Sunday-school, and Oliver Constable, +who ruled over working-men indeed, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>instead of boys, clerks, and +curates, but who had been at Oxford with her brothers and who lived in +such a perfect old place as Friarton Mill?</p> + +<p>In what respect was Oliver Constable’s sister, who had been educated +in good schools at home and abroad, very inferior to the other ladies +in the neighbourhood, whom, in her heart of hearts, Agneta Stanhope +appearing so humble in that innocent youth—of which at the same time +arrogance is perhaps the commoner immature accompaniment—never dreamt +of reckoning her own equals?</p> + +<p>Agneta was actually disposed to put more weight on the line of yeomen, +from which the Constables had sprung, than on the fashionable London +doctor, who was the father of one of the master’s wives, or on the +gallant major in the line from whom another lady claimed descent.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span></p> + +<p>Agneta showed herself extremely perverse where the best houses in +Friarton were concerned. To her there was no particular goodness about +them; and they had not the glamour of the farm and mill-houses. The +Friarton drawing-rooms, from Mrs. Hilliard’s downwards, were only more +or less sorry reflections of the drawing-room at home, they were not +at all like the delicious little parlours—all chimney-corners and +cupboards, at Copley Grange Farm and Friarton Mill.</p> + +<p>Agneta was just a trifle haughty and reserved when Harry took her among +the professional people in Friarton, and all the time she was as gay +as a lark, and as playful as a kitten, at Friarton Mill. She did not +emulate Harry in winning every heart. She piqued the Friarton ladies +by her neglect and incapacity for measuring their titles to respect. +Mrs. Hilliard and her cousin Catherine formed the only exceptions. Mrs. +Hilliard laughed at Agneta’s preferences, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>and Catherine simply held +Agneta as a big baby fit to rank with the overgrown school boy her +brother.</p> + +<p>Truth to tell, Agneta Stanhope, who was assured of her position, while +she did not approve from principle and instinct of debatable middle +ground, still never so much as imagined that she could compromise +herself by temporary association with people like the Wrights and +Fremantles. It was as a pure matter of taste that she chose to disport +herself among pronounced yeomen and tradespeople, whose habits and +tastes, from an accident of education and a piquancy of flavour, were +the opposite of oppressive to her.</p> + +<p>Fan Constable repaid Harry Stanhope’s confidence. She was very good to +Agneta, devoting herself to the girl’s gratification with an abstract +devotion—disinterested, guiltless of ulterior motives, peculiar to the +young woman. It was no matter that Agneta’s pleasures, when <span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>they took +the form of seeking for hens’ nests, and carrying the eggs home in the +skirt of her gown, or wishing to milk cows, were not only startling +but wholly antagonistic to Fan’s frame of mind and sense of fitness. +It was rather the old story of the roc’s egg which Fan would have +got at any price for her visitor. Fan in her solemn earnestness and +absolute matter-of-factness, masqueraded too to please Agneta, played +at the ideal miller’s daughter for whom the real miller’s daughter had +been wont to entertain a great contempt, dawdling among the sedges by +Buller’s Brook, sitting among the sacks in the mill gallery, munching +groats with her white teeth, roasting them in the kiln, having herself +weighed in the scales. And when Agneta requested, with fearless +directness and insistance, to be taken to Friarton to see what she +called ‘the ancestral shop,’ and be shown all over the premises in +order to have the complicated processes of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>making bread rendered clear +to her understanding, Fan went with the young lady without a demur. It +was on this occasion that Fan heard Agneta beg for an unbaked cake, and +pray that Oliver would carve her initials with his penknife on the soft +crust, as if it were the bark of a tree, and he were another Orlando to +her Rosalind, and then entreat that she might put it with her own hand +into the oven, concluding by calling everybody to promise faithfully +that when it came out, <i>her</i> cake should be duly forwarded with +the rest of the bread to Copley Grange Farm.</p> + +<p>Fan witnessed the ridiculous performance without more than a fleeting +pang. And if Agneta Stanhope had further taken it into her head—full +of fantastic whims—during the intoxication of these weeks which +formed her first holidays, that she and Fan should fill baskets with +floury loaves and carry them with their own hands to feed the poor, +there would have been <span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span>some danger of Fan’s complying with the absurd +suggestion, in the height of her infatuation to please Harry Stanhope’s +sister.</p> + +<p>Shrewd as Fan was, she became thoroughly taken in by the stranger. +Fan learnt to believe in Agneta, and there was relief and joy in +the belief, as entirely as Fan believed, with more reason where +single-heartedness was concerned, in Harry.</p> + +<p>After all, Agneta, though she was fond of Fan, liked Oliver still +better. He was neither her victim nor her slave, though he could not +help admiring what was admirable in her high breeding, and natural +sweetness and affectionateness, and being tolerant and kind to her. He +was not a son of the soil, neither had he been brought up in such total +unfamiliarity with girls of Agneta Stanhope’s stamp that he should fall +down and worship her, caught chiefly by the charm of her conventional +grace and refinement in their contrast with the conventional +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>uncouthness and vulgarity of the girls he had previously known.</p> + +<p>To Oliver Constable’s mind there was a considerable amount of snobbery +and caddishness—an absolute disloyalty to all which lies below the +immediate surface—in this ready subserviency of the self-made man to +the material advantages of the first conventional lady with whom he +comes in close contact. And as fine feathers did not necessarily make +fine birds to Oliver, he had been tempted to feel a grim satisfaction +when he read of such men’s being played with and fooled by exquisite +triflers who had subdued their captives, almost without an effort, by +trifles light as air. ‘Serve the duffers right,’ Oliver had growled. +He had imagined that if he were to love a woman with his whole heart +and soul, it would be the woman independent of the attributes of +any station, the noble woman, who, if she were technically as well +as ideally a lady, would be <span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span>as indifferent to mere technicalities, +perhaps as weary of them, as Catherine Hilliard often looked.</p> + +<p>Oliver Constable stood in no danger of being bound in thrall by Agneta +Stanhope, and his insensibility formed another racy distinction in her +eyes. No doubt in her cloistered schoolroom days, she had not yet begun +her career of conquest. But she had moved in circles where it is the +business of many men’s lives to please women, where it becomes a trick +of habit which keeps the hand in play, even when it is not pursued +for the sake of any individual woman. She had been accustomed, during +her passing glimpses of the world she was to live in, to be outwardly +deferred to, flattered and complimented. Now Mr. Constable, while she +was sure he was incapable of being anything save chivalrously good +to any woman, did not flatter her a bit. He had a strong propensity +to speak the truth always. Sometimes he forgot himself <span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>so far as to +take her off almost as he took off his sister, or, worse still, to +lose sight of her existence for the moment, as he lost sight of Fan’s. +Withal, in spite of the brotherly obliviousness, and the difference of +opinion on many points between Oliver and Fan, Agneta could not fail +to see that in the middle of his dry jokes and bitter enough sarcasms, +Oliver Constable regarded his sister far more as his equal than Harry +regarded his sister whom he habitually petted. Mr. Constable consulted +Miss Constable seriously, even when he did not take her advice. But +Harry, though he was sufficiently interested to notice Agneta’s mode +of doing her hair, her changes of dress, her adopted occupations, +and would even, as she was gratefully persuaded few brothers would, +put himself about to contribute to her occupations and render them +agreeable, never talked to her even as he talked to Horry, never made +her the confidante of his schemes and plans, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span>never asked her opinion +on any subject of more consequence than a neck-tie or the cutting of +his hair. Harry would never think of behaving in any other manner to a +girl like Agneta.</p> + +<p>Agneta Stanhope was not a born coquette, but she had been taught to +estimate at their proper value all her advantages, whether natural or +acquired. She was well aware, in this her girlhood, that they were the +weapons with which she was to cut her way to fortune—the only fortune +which could possibly await a well-born, fairly attractive girl of her +rank, who had no portion beyond what served for her slender allowance +of pocket-money, though she had influential friends, who could at +least lead her into the arena where she was to secure a creditable +establishment, or prove a failure and remain a poor relation to the end +of her days. There was an obligation on Agneta’s part, to herself as +well as to her kindred, for the future in addition to the present, to +be agreeable, to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>charm men—that she might grow skilful in the art of +war, that she might not only smite down one antagonist, but overthrow +the foe by sixes and tens, so as to have several suitors to pick and +choose from, with the greater chance of escaping the collapse of a +<i>mauvais parti</i> for a husband.</p> + +<p>Certainly, the prevailing burden of her first, and all her succeeding +unmarried seasons, still sat lightly on Agneta Stanhope, yet she was +not without a latent, pervading sense of it, which caused her, in +very sport, to polish and poise her spear, and essay it against any +natural enemy, let him be ever so far beyond the pale of her claims and +requirements.</p> + +<p>Thus, Agneta, out of a kind of womanly instinct, though one not +known to the higher order of women, set herself, with her eyes open, +to please Oliver Constable, to beguile him into making it his main +object to please her, and into sliding imperceptibly into platonically +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span>romantic and tender relations with her. Undoubtedly, Agneta was not +so well acquainted with human nature as to anticipate any danger of +scorching her own wings in the process of consuming the heart of +another, far less to measure the degree of injury and suffering which +might be involved in that same casual scorching of her fairy queen and +butterfly attributes. But though she had been wise beyond her years and +before her time, such wisdom would not have sufficed to arrest her in +her course. Her latent high spirits, which became her antecedents, had +survived her lifetime of discipline.</p> + +<p>In the dire necessity of subjugating men till they became her open or +secret lovers, she would have said, laughing with good-natured mockery, +at the most distant suspicion of such a peril, ‘if my wings are to be +scorched, let them. I shall survive to flutter them as bravely as ever, +till they are confined by a marriage <span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>ring. I must have Mr. Constable +think me nice—the nicest girl he has ever known.’</p> + +<p>When Agneta Stanhope turned back her hair, or made it into a silken +fringe for Oliver, as Alice Grey braided her hair for another; when +Agneta set her gipsy hat in the most bewitching fashion at Oliver, and +gathered blackberries in the company of the miller of Friarton Mill +and his sister, the blackberries not being by any means Agneta’s chief +object; when she turned a demure little dissenter, in the teeth of +Fan Constable’s being a loyal churchwoman in right of the Constables’ +mother, the curate’s daughter, and drew away the said churchwoman, +to the great edification of Jack Dadd and ’Mily Polley, to evening +attendance at the chapel favoured by the shopkeepers, where Oliver +continued to worship as his fathers had worshipped before him; when +Agneta sang her ballads, which, like homely Christian names, had begun +to reappear in her <span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span>set in proportion as they had died out in lower +circles, her ‘Sweet Homes,’ and ‘Maids of Allanwater,’—the maid having +been a miller’s daughter, let us observe in passing—her ‘Brooks’ +and ‘Rosebuds,’ and told her naïve stories of the mild maidenly +adventures she and Miss Dennison had met with in their quiet life, +to Oliver, he showed no sign of perceiving her delicate manœuvres. +He offered only a passive resistance. He stood like a rock assailed +by summer waves rippling back from it with an incessant murmur, or +like a giant Gulliver submitting with a patient, hardly perceptible +shrug of his shoulders, awkward man as he was in his invulnerability, +because he could not avoid the assault, to the airy overtures of a fair +Lilliputian, who, reaching up on tiptoe, did not attain to the height +of his knee.</p> + +<p>Harry Stanhope opened his eyes wide, and laughed aloud at the fine, +and, of course, perfectly decorous little farce. ‘What a desperate +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span>flirt that monkey Aggie is going to prove, to be sure,’ he remarked +to his gossip Horace; ‘barely out of the nursery, yet ready to fly +at game like Constable! What would the child do with him if she did +<span id="cor14"></span>succeed in bringing him down? He would cumber her bag at starting, with +a vengeance. Not Aunt Julia’s game, eh, Horry? But the old man can take +care of himself, though he is as much in earnest in his way as his +sister is in hers, and would be fit to do something outrageous if he +were winged. The chit knows what she is about also, and, as no harm can +come of it, she may be left to amuse herself, after the fashion of her +kind.’</p> + +<p>If Harry had not given <i>carte blanche</i> Horry might have called +it a positive disgrace for Aggie to attempt a flirtation with a man +in Constable’s position, forgetting for the moment that he and Harry +had elected to be yeomen, and that Agneta could therefore be viewed as +the sister of two yeomen. But <span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span>the oracle had spoken, and silenced any +voice Horry might have exercised in the matter.</p> + +<p>It was sensible, severe Fan Constable who looked on at the play which +sometimes provoked, and sometimes amused Oliver—for he was a young man +and so susceptible to various influences—with glistening eyes and a +throbbing heart. Was there more than one, true aristocrat, forgetful, +not simply of self, but of the world? Might the friendship between +Copley Grange Farm and Friarton Mill be cemented by a double alliance?</p> + +<p>Fan was the last girl in the world to stoop, even for the purpose of +conquering. If she did not receive allegiance unsought, she would +never, by premeditation and with design, seek it. But she could find no +condemnation for the doings of her new friend. All Fan’s blame was for +Oliver, who continued, or pretended to continue, utterly insensible to +the wonderful irresistible honour conferred upon him. Fan <span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>discovered +springs of sympathy with Agneta, while she had no patience with Oliver. +She was impelled to say something to him one evening when brother and +sister had just parted from the Stanhopes and seen them go on their +way through Copley Grange Park to the Farm. The group lingered on the +road, in order to go up close to the half-shut-up house, examine the +objectionable façade, and stand—figures in keeping—in the portico, +while they ascertained for themselves how Friarton Mill looked from +the great house in whose prospect it was understood to form such an +ornament. The two Constables, on their part, stood on their own side of +the Brook in the mill-house court.</p> + +<p>‘I am not fond of gushing, I believe,’ said Fan, slowly and +deliberately, as if she were making a searching analysis of her private +propensities. ‘As a rule, I am convinced I am not fond of superlatives +or caressing expressions’—speaking with studied moderation—‘but <span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span>I +will say’—becoming ardent at a bound—‘Miss Stanhope, Agneta—I may +call her behind her back as well as before her face, since she has +asked me to call her by her Christian name,’ proclaimed Fan, with +honest, affectionate pride in the permission—‘is the most lovable, +darling girl I ever met.’</p> + +<p>‘She is not a bad specimen of her class, I dare say,’ said Oliver with +provoking impartiality.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! Oliver,’ protested Fan, hot and indignant as at an unfeeling +slight to her idol, ‘I am sure her testimony to your merits would be +very different, and—and much warmer. She thinks so much of your good +opinion, too. Oh! Oliver, I am tempted to think you without eyes, or +ears, or heart, and you a young man seeing nobody—here, at least—who +is fit to be mentioned in the same breath with Agneta Stanhope, while +it will be your own fault if——’ Fan stopped in time, she was the +last <span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>woman to betray what looked to her upright, unsophisticated +eyes, another woman’s weakness, however transparently that woman might +herself reveal it. Fan had also become aware, in the case of the Polley +girls, who, whatever their offences, had not lost their claim to modest +womanhood, that she could not go nearer to mortally offending her +brother than to hint at an unsolicited preference for him.</p> + +<p>Even at the mere implication he grew red again with a manly, modest +man’s shame, mingled now with a strong dash of impatience and scorn. +‘You are grossly mistaken, Fan,’ he said, in the first impulse +of anger; then he recovered himself and went on with a laugh not +altogether forced, ‘Miss Stanhope (Oliver no more called her Agneta +behind her back than to her face) is a little goose—save her young +ladyship’s pretensions; but you are a greater fool than I took you for, +Fannikin, if you imagine for a moment that she is sincere in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>more +than in making the most of her holiday rustication—this is life in +<i>villeggiatura</i> to her—and in compelling us all to like her. +She and Harry are extravagantly fond of being liked. I am afraid it +don’t answer in his case, but in hers it will cause her to be a very +popular great lady some day, I have no question. She has exceedingly +pretty, gracious, high-bred ways—you hear I grant they are pretty, the +prettier that they are second nature rather than affectation. But she +is also as thorough a woman of the world as if she were ten—twenty +years older, ready to counsel her daughter as Tennyson’s aristocratic +matron instructed her child.’</p> + +<p>Fan was utterly incredulous and gravely offended. She would not give up +Agneta Stanhope’s looking upon Fan and her brother as perfect equals, +even if she were not suffered to add that, so far as Agneta’s personal +choice went, she would not have objected to casting in her lot with +them.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span></p> + +<p>Fan was only a little staggered by some words which Harry let fall when +he came over unexpectedly one morning to offer his sister’s excuses for +having been hurried away sooner than she had counted on from the Farm, +without being able to bid good-bye to Miss Constable. For, in truth, +like the sweet, graceful vision that she had flashed upon them, Agneta +Stanhope vanished in a moment, vision-like, out of the Constables’ +sphere.</p> + +<p>‘Aunt Julia found out that she could send old Jennings and meet Aggie +in time for them to join her and the General at Crewe station and go +on with them to Blackcombe, where the Herveys are to have some special +affair for Dolph’s coming of age. They are old friends and connections +of ours, you know, so it don’t matter that Aggie should be out at their +ball before she has regularly come out of her shell. Ungrateful little +wretch!—she professed to be bitten with our farm life, but <span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span>wasn’t she +quickly cured when she heard what was in store for her? All the same,’ +Harry corrected himself, remembering to whom he was speaking, and +prompted by his natural kindly feeling, ‘she was very sorry that she +could not get over to see and thank you.’</p> + +<p>Still in the face of this shock, which Oliver was too magnanimous +to enlarge upon, Fan clung to her faith in Agneta’s eternal +friendship—nay, sisterly affection. Fan was only confirmed in her +tenacious belief by getting an inkling of the fact that not only Mrs. +Hilliard, but all Friarton, not possessing a grain of Oliver’s tender +consideration and unbounded generosity, were laughing at the end of the +temporary alliance between the girls with more exuberant mirth than +charitable sympathy.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX"> + CHAPTER XX.<br> + <span>OLIVER CAUSES A SPLIT IN THE CHAPEL CONNECTION BECAUSE OF HIS DOGGED + OPPOSITION TO HARTLEY, NORRIS, AND CO.</span> + </h2> +</div> + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">There</span> was one man of Friarton descent whose distinguished fortunes +occurred not once only to Fan Constable’s mind as presenting a marked +contrast to her brother’s perverse crotchet of self-destruction, where +his social position and even his material prosperity were concerned. +For any tyro might crave leave to doubt whether Oliver Constable would +increase or even retain the amount of fortune which his father had +bequeathed to him by becoming a tradesman in his own person. As for +Fan, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>she had been fully persuaded from the first that Oliver would +ruin himself commercially—no less than socially. Oliver denied the +necessity stoutly, and when it was thrust upon him, quoted, as Fan +considered, irrelevantly, if not irreverently, the Divine assertion +that a man’s life does not consist of the things which at the best he +only seems to possess.</p> + +<p>Hartley, of the now renowned firm of Hartley, Norris, & Co., had stuck +to trade down to the present generation. But then trade had made of the +representative Hartley not simply a man, but a gentleman so far beyond +challenge that he had not merely been spared from the counting-house +and warehouses to Oxford, he had been permitted to become a sleeping +partner, enjoying the funds without undergoing any of the toils of the +huge, opulent concern which his immediate predecessors had founded, +pushed, and fostered by unremitting <span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>exertions, giving themselves heart +and soul to the business.</p> + +<p>John Hartley, in his character of pure gainer by the struggles and +victories of his father and partners in their branch of trade, had +developed very much into a cultivated <i>dilettante</i>. The chief sign +he gave of having inherited any of the individual vigour and ambition +of his stock, was in the zeal and determination with which he avoided +the slightest association—save by name and the receipt of the lion’s +share of the profits—with the business. Yet, according to Oliver +Constable’s principles, John Hartley stood morally responsible for it +in its every detail, down to its pettiest customer and its meanest +workman, while his responsibility was not confined to his own business +and his conduct in its discharge, but extended to his influence over +the whole trading class, to which, in spite of every protest, he +distinctly belonged.</p> + +<p>Oliver said he would not judge John <span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span>Hartley. No doubt the man had an +æsthetic bent, and he was squeamish where one kind of vulgarity was +concerned. These idiosyncrasies led him almost perforce to dedicate +himself to the refining of his tastes and the beautifying of his estate +and house—well-nigh to the same extent as the squire of Copley Grange +dedicated himself to a like evangel. And naturally the sleeping partner +and the squire took to each other’s society, silently agreeing to sink +into oblivion the gulf between the gentle fore-fathers of the one and +the rude progenitors of the other.</p> + +<p>John Hartley hit on an earl’s daughter with an equally accommodating +memory to consent to be his wife, and never afterwards to allude, +except by a calm, smiling, cleverly timed jest, which disarmed +criticism and took the censorious world by storm, to the source of the +excess of luxuries with which her husband was able to surround her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span></p> + +<p>It was no business of Oliver Constable’s, whatever he might think; he +was not called upon to proclaim John Hartley a cowardly shirker and +slurrer over of his obligations, an absentee from his post of duty, +a deserter of his class. Certainly Hartley was not singular in his +interpretation of the rights and privileges of the inheritor of a +great firm and its wealth. He went with the multitude in his use or +abuse of the choice of occupations and interests which he commanded. +Even an earnest, enthusiastic commentator on the ‘grand old name of +gentleman,’ who has proved to the gaping world’s edification that +it may be borne by a tradesman of the most unsavoury sort, has been +forced by the clamorous exigencies of public opinion to allow her hero +a problematical title to gentle birth and to wed him to the noble +daughter of a sorry gentleman; above all—strange incongruity to +promote the pseudo-tradesman <span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span>to the rank of a squire, and the society +of the country squirearchy, before he dies.</p> + +<p>But Oliver was roused from his equanimity when he shared the sensation +felt by all Friarton at the news that John Hartley had come down with +Lady Cicely and their household to be even nearer neighbours to the +Constables than the Stanhopes were, by occupying Copley Grange, lent +to them by the squire, while the sleeping partner showed himself wide +awake in contesting the representation of the county, just left vacant +by the death of the late member.</p> + +<p>Hartleys to right of him, Stanhopes to left of him, how could Oliver +resist the admission, for the moment at least, that he was with them +and not with the Dadd and Polley set, to which he had sent in his +adherence? For John Hartley made his first canvassing call on his next +neighbour the miller and baker, and though he did not conceal that he +was at Friarton Mill to solicit political support, he acknowledged +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span>there, as he was prepared to announce on the hustings, that he was a +tradesman, and frankly claimed the vote of a brother-tradesman, who +understood John Hartley’s circumstances and the advantage of returning +him to Parliament.</p> + +<p>John Hartley was a quiet agreeable man, handsome, with a slightly +affected assumption of Bohemian fashions in his ferocious beard, +semi-artistic slouched sombrero, and colossal meerschaum. In reality he +had not the slightest taint of the Bohemian about him, being pacific, +prudent, and somewhat obstinate. He had only adopted the gentlemanlike +Bohemian as being the reverse of the gentlemanlike tradesman.</p> + +<p>Lady Cicely called on Miss Constable. Lady Cicely was not childish or +girlish, like Agneta Stanhope. The sleeping partner’s partner admired +Friarton Mill in a well-bred way, but she never made the smallest +pretence of going mad for rusticity or of playing at <span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span>being a rustic. +Neither did she mistake Fan for the typical Miller’s daughter. The +visitor took care, notwithstanding, to infer with perfect tact, all +the while, that she was a little struck by finding Miss Constable +a different person from what might have been expected. Not that +Lady Cicely implied Fan was her equal. Lady Cicely was a stout, +commonplace, slightly stolid young woman—the least gratifying, to a +highly-trained eye, of all John Hartley’s surroundings, so that one had +to consider there was that in her origin which indemnified the mind +for the loss—bordering on an offence—to the eye. Still she was not +without dignity in her double chin, and certainly not without mind; +she never lost sight of the fact, or suffered Fan to lose sight of it +for a moment, though it was by no means insisted on with unladylike +self-assertion, it was quietly taken for granted, that an earl’s +daughter and a tradesman’s daughter belonged to opposite poles of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span>society which no two people in their senses could confuse. But she +administered the same subtle compensation bestowed by Agneta Stanhope, +when the couple of aristocrats agreed in placing Fan quite on a level +with her former Friarton patronesses.</p> + +<p>In addition, Lady Cicely civilly and sensibly recognised the points +in common between her husband and Oliver Constable, and connected the +men together by the safe general term ‘business men.’ ‘Mr. Hartley +has never taken an active part in the affairs of his firm, he leaves +everything to his partners,’ she was so good as to explain to Fan; ‘but +of course the interests of trade are his interests, and he will look +after them in the House if he is returned for the county. He and Mr. +Constable ought to have a great deal to say to each other, so that we +depend on your brother’s dining with us next week at the Grange. He +must reserve a day for us when we are quite by ourselves—you <span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span>will +keep him in mind—won’t you?’ Lady Cicely almost pled with Fan, though +she never dreamt of including the sister, who smiled a little grimly at +the significant omission, in the invitation to the brother.</p> + +<p>Lady Cicely was too comfortably resigned and independent on her own +account to care much for public favour, but, like a dutiful wife, +she coveted it, so far as she saw her way to it, for her husband. +She desired to see him in Parliament because so many of her set were +there. She did not trouble herself much about Mr. Hartley’s being in +trade—so many people whom she knew had something to do with trade +now-a-days—still it was advisable that he should be pointed out as +M.P. for his native county, as well as sleeping partner in Hartley, +Norris, & Co.</p> + +<p>After all, Fan did not find fault altogether with the Hartleys’ +self-interested notice. It was fully understood to be a give-and-take +connection. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span>It had none of that sole prerogative of bestowing +honour—to which Fan had so bitterly objected in former days. To be +sure, the Hartleys were not like the royally frank and free Stanhopes. +Oh, no. Mr. Hartley and Lady Cicely would never raise their social +inferiors by generous adoption into the upper ranks, or even stoop +magnanimously to the lower. Though indeed, had Oliver Constable so +chosen, it was in his power to be, in his degree, the man of university +training and wide travel, the polished man of civilised society, who +had shaken himself loose from all save the money earned by trade, which +John Hartley showed himself with the approbation of everybody, save a +few fanatics.</p> + +<p>But Oliver might make use of the Hartleys, as the Hartleys were +plainly disposed to make use of him. Fan was ready in this silent, +mutual compact, to be of benefit to the Hartleys; she returned Lady +Cicely’s call, though Fan was not to dine <span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span>at Copley Grange—since +it was necessary to draw the line somewhere—and in the course of +the call consented to the hostess’s extracting a considerable amount +of available information about the place and people from the guest. +Fan spoke to her acquaintances down to the Polleys and Dadds of Lady +Cicely’s neighbourliness and willingness to confer her countenance on +Friarton, in return for Friarton’s votes to her husband.</p> + +<p>When Lady Cicely easily succeeded, late in the day, in securing the +distinction of being appointed one of the stall-keepers at a bazaar, +and the chief patroness of a conversazione in the neglected museum, in +the course of caterprises undertaken by an indefatigable eleemosynary +committee in the behalf of the local charities, Fan cheerfully worked +and catered for her ladyship’s stall, and for the sale of her packets +of tickets.</p> + +<p>It seemed as if Oliver must be on John <span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>Hartley’s committee, the list +of whose members soon bore the bold scrawl of Harry Stanhope’s name. +The young fellow chose to write himself, with his most unyeomanlike +fist, ‘Harry Stanhope, yeoman.’ It appeared as if the Oxford-bred +miller must be dragged forward, in his own despite, to take the place +which fortune and education had given him, to ride and drive, and lunch +and speechify, here and there, in the heat of faction, with those to +whom he was really allied, so as to forget the mill and the baker’s +shop with their drudgery, and to forget along with them other shops and +their drudgeries, other shopkeepers with their aims and rewards—high +or low—of which Oliver Constable’s mind had lately been full.</p> + +<p>It looked as if Oliver were going to comply with the irresistible +demands made upon him as a man and a citizen. He received John Hartley +with tolerable cordiality. The one man listened to the other’s private +explanations <span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>as well as to his public speeches, and, in order to do +both fairly, Oliver not only attended the meetings the candidate was +calling, but accepted his invitations to dine <i>en famille</i> with +him and Lady Cicely. The result, which Oliver could not well avoid, +was that a considerable amount of familiarity was established between +him and the Hartleys. He was hailed as an ally by John Hartley on all +occasions; and it was Oliver’s arm which Lady Cicely took when she left +her stall at the bazaar to go to the refreshment table, and when she +walked the whole length and breadth of the town-hall in order to make +her purchases from her fellow-stall-keepers.</p> + +<p>Fan was growing elated at the turn events were taking, and the +precedence thrust on Oliver which he could no longer escape accepting. +And if he accepted it, he must needs lose sight of his hobby and step +involuntarily, as it were, to a vantage ground from which it would +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span>hardly be possible for him to retreat afterwards. Mr. Hartley was +the Liberal member largely upheld by the tradespeople, who not merely +approved of his principles—which, though they had never come to the +front before, were unlike his practice, and belonged to his trade +descent and trade interests—but were proud of him as a tradesman +himself. Still no doubt it was on so gigantic a scale and with such +advantages that the ordinary lineaments of his class were a good deal +effaced, and that it was out of the question for him to fraternise +with the smaller fry. He was also, through his personal antecedents, +habits and predilections, and notably through his marriage with Lady +Cicely, at one with the opposite side—supported by the great bulk of +the professional men who were apt to be more Conservative than the +Conservative county gentry and Conservative nobility to whose skirts +the professional men clung. It was no matter that John Hartley was +fighting in a political <span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span>battle against Colonel Hastings, the head of +the ancient house of Hastings of Westmote and the nephew of the Marquis +of Saltmarsh.</p> + +<p>The strife in its greatest keenness was conducted with the courtesy of +gentlemen. Between their electioneering bouts, the men met not merely +as amicable foes, but as social allies in the houses of their common +acquaintances. John Hartley and Colonel Hastings agreed to differ. They +were more than familiar with each other’s faces. They were members of +the same clubs—if not of the Reform and Carlton—of the Alpine and +Travellers’ Clubs, and Colonel Hastings was married to an old neighbour +and early friend of Lady Cicely Hartley’s.</p> + +<p>Therefore it could not be held that Oliver Constable was necessarily +consigning himself to farther fraternity with the lower orders when he +espoused the cause of John Hartley.</p> + +<p>But had he espoused the cause? All at once, with the thrill of a +shock—not only to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>Fan and the Hartleys, but to the whole Liberal +party—including the defaulter’s fellow-tradesmen, nay, to the very +Conservatives, who gave the newcomer only a half-hearted gibing +welcome, as to an erratic wavering adherent, who was not at all to be +depended upon—Oliver marched over with his single vote to the enemy.</p> + +<p>It sounded as if he were a turncoat, it brought down upon Oliver the +indignant accusation and ugly name, though there was nothing on earth +to be gained by it, as Fan protested piteously. Oliver achieved the +climax of inconsistency by figuring as a Conservative. ‘I am not a +Conservative,’ he denied, and then added hastily, ‘but what’s in a +name? I never was and never will be a party man,’ he cried; ‘and I am +going to stand by Hastings because I think he is less of a party man +than Hartley. I don’t say that both are not honest men according to +their lights, but Hastings is either <span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>better qualified to judge for +himself, or he is more bent on acting in obedience to his judgment and +conscience. He has pledged himself to do what he can for more than one +or two measures which carry justice and righteousness on their face, +that I would to God Englishmen of all parties were manly and true +enough to unite and carry through, but which are not in the <i>rôle</i> +of Hastings’ party any more than they are on the cards of the Liberals. +Hartley will not bring forward or second one of these bills; on the +contrary, he will throw what weight he possesses in the opposite +scale. He has said as much. He is too cautious, too Conservative at +heart—under his Liberal cloak if you will—too selfish in grasping and +not scattering—not even risking his gains, too bound to a clique to +do anything else. I don’t go in for Hastings in everything, not by a +long chalk; I am not a Conservative, but since there is only the choice +between these two, on the whole I <span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>prefer Hastings and his individual +politics, let us say, to Hartley and his general creed.’</p> + +<p>Oliver might prefer whom he liked. He was a freeborn subject of her +Majesty, and undoubtedly he was at liberty to make his selection, but +he received little toleration and less sympathy in his withdrawal from +his party. His secession was met with a burst of reprobation. Old Dadd +called him ‘that hair-splitting fool.’ Mrs. Polley argued it was all +very well to have a mind of one’s own, but sheer refractoriness would +not sell loaves. See if Oliver Constable had not managed with his +college learning to anger his customers all round. She went in for her +own opinions, as most of her hearers knew, but for men and women in +business not to be able to keep their minds to themselves on occasions, +and behave as their best friends had a right to expect of them, which +was not to be weathercocks, and fly in the face of their associates and +supporters, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>was rank conceit and impertinence, little short of madness.</p> + +<p>Not even Mr. Holland with the deacons of the chapel could pass by +Oliver’s conduct without remonstrance, seeing that it threatened +serious damage to the brilliant prosperity just dawning on the +congregation.</p> + +<p>The chapel had been almost to a man for John Hartley. Not that he +was himself a chapel-man. As might have been supposed, the plain and +pithy, bald and homely Nonconformist worship was extremely repugnant +to him. But he had shown that he retained a reserve of his father’s +and grandfather’s sharpness in seizing an advantage, when he renewed, +in a manner, his alliance with the chapel, in anticipation of his +election. He recalled to his recollection, what he had apparently long +forgotten, that his father had been brought up a dissenter, and had +lived and died a maintainer of dissent in his own person. John Hartley +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>proved satisfactorily his powers of memory, by all at once bringing +out a hidden store of knowledge of dissenting annals—exceedingly +acceptable to a religious body accustomed to be, not to say slighted, +but ignored, by their brethren of the church. He betrayed a sentimental +inclination to linger over and dally with these old associations, +which served to propitiate the chapel members for his desertion of +their communion. He was not guilty of absolute misstatement when he +suffered it to be inferred that circumstances had been against him. +The difficulties of his position, the entanglements of the circle in +which he moved, especially the natural influence of Lady Cicely, had +drawn him back into the bosom of a church which was at last bestirring +itself, and testifying to the good it had got from the noble protests +of the early Puritans and the later Methodists against its periods of +latitudinarianism.</p> + +<p>John Hartley did not pretend that he would <span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>return to the ranks of the +nonconformists, and the chapel people of Friarton were too reasonable +to expect it of a man like him. But he treated them with great respect, +almost with pensive tenderness. He called upon Mr. Holland and +mentioned in conversation that his father had sat under the profitable +ministry of an able and pious grand-uncle of the Friarton pastor’s. +John Hartley requested to be taken into the chapel on a week-day, +though it did not seem to occur to him to attend the Wednesday lecture +or the Friday prayer-meeting, and then asked humbly if he might be +permitted to present new, more efficient, and ornamental chandeliers, +to help to shed material light on the congregation—a request which was +handsomely granted.</p> + +<p>Lady Cicely called on Mrs. Holland, and begged the shape of her baby’s +pinafore, thus showing that, though Lady Cicely was by every inherited +affinity a churchwoman, she was, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>nevertheless, so far leavened by her +husband’s purer ecclesiastical origin, as not to suspect contamination +lurking in a dissenting baby’s bib and frills. The result was that the +chapel people—from Mr. Holland to Jack Dadd—were strongly in favour +of John Hartley, to the extent of considering him in part their own +property and candidate. For though he had not promised to procure the +disestablishment of the church, he had engaged to remain neutral on +the Burials Bill, while Colonel Hastings was openly antagonistic to +dissenting prayers prayed by a dissenting clergyman, over a dissenter’s +corpse in a parish churchyard. And the chapel constituents were assured +they would procure yet better terms from their member. They began +to grow rashly secure of his good offices and to plume themselves +beforehand on the distinction that was awaiting them.</p> + +<p>Oliver’s fresh secession was therefore not <span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>only an affront to his +co-religionists, they were driven to reckon him guilty of uncalled-for +schism and lukewarm treachery, where the interests of the chapel +were concerned. For unluckily, his example affected others—only +a contemptible few, no doubt—malcontents, jealous of the leading +deacons and the larger contributors, such as were to be found in every +congregation, discontented Adullamites, the breath of whose nostrils +was mischief. These were mostly men among the poorer members of no +repute, who had failed in business, who had erred in their religious +profession and moral practice, persons who did little credit to Oliver +Constable as his followers, on whom he probably did not count, as he +did not encourage their adherence. But he made them prominent to the +disgust of the rest of the congregation. He instigated them, whether +he meant it or not, when they would otherwise have wrangled aimlessly, +to show that ‘the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span>connection’ was divided, to make a definite +demonstration, which, however small, was a scandal in the eyes of the +magnates of the chapel, for Colonel Hastings.</p> + +<p>There were meetings official and unofficial in the chapel vestry and in +members’ houses, that the congregation might discuss among themselves +the question of Oliver Constable’s delinquency. There were loud and +long whisperings about him as not only disaffected, but as a young +fellow of dangerous license of opinion, who would in all likelihood +end in rationalism and free-thinking. ’Liza Polley regarded him, in +horrified fascination, as a dreadful young genius, who, in his pride +of unsanctified intellect, dared to defy Mr. Holland and Mr. Dadd. Yet +she had never heard such naughty words as Jack Dadd would let fall +sometimes, drop from Oliver’s mouth. He was a regular and reverent +worshipper at the chapel. Nobody had ever seen him ‘screwed’ <span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span>or so +much as half screwed, though he kept company on occasions with the +young shopkeepers of the town. He was understood to be domestic in +his habits. He was known to consider the poor with even an excess of +liberality, while he sought to do it without observation. ’Liza had +heard him laughed at for the absurd rigidity of his scruples in the +conduct of his business. But she feared it would be all the worse +for Oliver, if he turned out, after all, to be little better than an +atheist, and a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Surely nobody would think him +‘a great catch’ now. The fact that his suit to her had come to nothing, +was like one of those deliverances—of which one reads in good books.</p> + +<p>Oliver was not left in partial ignorance of the ordeal through which he +was passing. Notably the minister, and next to him one qualified member +after another, were appointed to deal with the offender. Oliver found +the minister the least arrogant and intolerant of his <span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>inquisitors. +But even Mr. Holland could not see what Oliver thought he saw of the +comparative insignificance of the burial of the dead to the welfare +of the living. Mr. Holland looked as if he too considered Oliver’s +citation of the injunction, ‘let the dead bury their dead,’ misapplied, +as Fan had judged his quotation of other maxims which she did not +propose to treat as of no weight in themselves. Mr. Holland talked of +institutions and organisations, signs and precedents, of the urgent +necessity for unity among brethren, of preserving the peace of the +congregation, of making everything give place to the great interests +of nonconformity in England, of the compulsion laid upon men that they +should work with the tools which Providence had put into their hands.</p> + +<p>But here Oliver was as obdurate and slow of comprehension as his pastor +could be on the respective claims of the dead and the living.</p> + +<p>‘Right and wrong can never undergo change <span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span>or modification,’ protested +Oliver hotly. ‘I was a man before I was a Christian. I am a Christian +just because I am convinced Christianity is the one sheet anchor and +lever for humanity. I was and am a Christian before I ever will be a +<span id="cor15"></span>Nonconformist.’</p> + +<p>The result was that Oliver found himself isolated and ostracised, +viewed as a contumacious chapel member, suffered of course to continue +among the loyal members, because there was no formula by which he could +be expelled on such grounds, but no longer trusted and approved of; so +far from it, he was in the meantime an object of reprobation to the +greater number of his brethren.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it could not be helped, perhaps he partly deserved his +condemnation. For Oliver was not altogether clear in his judgment and +conscience where nonconformity was concerned. He was by constitution a +many-sided man, prone to eclecticism on most subjects, except, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span>indeed, +on what were to him the eternal verities of right and wrong in life, +and in a divinely ordained religion. He must always be more or less at +variance with men who were never divided in their minds on the merits +of all other questions which, to Oliver Constable, were, to say the +least, open to discussion.</p> + +<p>He had read and seen a good deal on both sides of English +ecclesiastical history. He had sympathies with both. His heroes stood +ranked under opposing banners. He gave in his adherence to Jeremy +Taylor and Bishop Butler and Samuel Wilberforce, as well as to Richard +Baxter and John Wesley and Robert Hall.</p> + +<p>But Oliver had been brought up a nonconformist. He had gone with his +father to the chapel, while Fan had gone with her mother to the church.</p> + +<p>There had been no necessary strife in the family on this account. +Peter Constable, though a man of inferior abilities to his son, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span>had possessed some mental features in common with Oliver. Peter +had respected his wife’s form of faith as she had respected his. +Occasionally he had joined in her service and she had joined in his, +but in proportion as there was no rancorous war of creeds, there +had been no proselytism. To Oliver the chapel was the church of his +fathers, and of his section of the community. He was perfectly sensible +of the defects of its system, but he was far from prepared to grant +that the merits did not exceed the defects, and still less that the +defects of dissenters were more ruinous than the shortcomings of +churchmen.</p> + +<p>Under this impression, Oliver held it disloyal to abandon the chapel, +any more than the class to which he belonged. At the same time he had +his doubts and scruples. But just as he was a man of much stronger +imagination and capacity for idealisation than John Hartley was, +Oliver did not feel offended by the bareness and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>ruggedness of the +ecclesiastical ways he trod. He saw beyond them, even as he saw beyond +the modern smoothness and smartness of the chapel building, back into +what struck him as the less objectionable gauntness and grimness of +its predecessor in which earnest and fervent men had worshipped, +often to the peril and loss of their earthly joys and worldly goods. +There were records in existence which proved that the chapel had been +among the earliest of its kind in England. When Oliver thought that +contemporaries and allies of John Milton and John Bunyan, Oliver +Cromwell, Blake and Daniel Defoe—who, it seems, has been convicted of +time-serving and double-dealing, but who was so stout and unflinching a +patriot withal, that one may be tempted to prefer Defoe’s shuffling to +some later men’s consistency—Oliver Constable laughed at the idea of +men of narrow and uncultured intellect and vulgar bumptiousness being +the sole figures that peopled the region in which he <span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span>had come to sit +apart, conscious that he was looked upon as an interloper and false +friend, unworthy of the right hand of fellowship, or of the confidence +of his companions.</p> + +<p>John Hartley won the election mainly by the support of the +dissenters—whom, however, success did not at once soften to the +renegade.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXI"> + CHAPTER XXI. + <br> + <span>MUTINY IN THE MILL AND THE BAKEHOUSE.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver</span> was a little liable to look over the heads of his subordinates +as well as his equals, to be possessed by his purpose instead of +possessing it, and to follow it out—having no attention to spare for +the signs of the times, though he was particularly calculated to call +them forth in hostile array, and they were certain to count largely in +the result. It took Oliver by surprise when he was met by the ‘poser’ +which he might reasonably have expected, of resistance and anarchy in +his own dominions, where he had been seeking to enact transcendental +laws and attempting to carry out, not political or social, but moral +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>economy—not every man for himself alone, but every man for his +neighbour still more, ‘in honour preferring one another,’ which Oliver +persisted in regarding as the only worthy and enduring trade principles.</p> + +<p>There had been growls of dissatisfaction, sneers of scepticism, tacit +defiance in the mill and the bakehouse, which had all passed unheeded +by Oliver, before the storm broke forth. It began with a comparatively +trifling <i>émeute</i> in the mill after the miller’s men had been +comparing notes with the journeymen bakers who went far before the +grinders of the raw grain in crude, shallow quickness of reasoning and +one-sided, undigested knowledge. The journeymen bakers first crammed +the young millers with the rank growth of their supposed grievances, +and then adroitly pushed the crammed men before them, into the breach, +to open the battle with Oliver their common enemy.</p> + +<p>There were long-standing usages and privileges <span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span>in the miller and +baker trades which Oliver had thought fit to abolish without asking +the consent of his servants farther than in the address which he +delivered on entering into possession of the mill and the shop, and +that lay beyond the comprehension of the cleverest man among them, +who immediately made up his mind that it was all ‘soft sawder’ and +‘book-learning bosh.’ The men chose to regard these time-out-of-mind +customs and liberties, though they had no direct bearing on any +miller’s or baker’s prosperity, and were even sometimes prejudicial to +fair play among the men themselves, as their rules to which they had +agreed on entering their trades. No master had any right to interfere +with and overturn these rules without the men’s concurrence; above +all, they were not such fools as to be defrauded of them by a fine +assumption of philanthropy on the part of their antagonist.</p> + +<p>Oliver discovered that there had been disobedience <span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span>and evasion of +a regulation which he had laid down at the Mill, that two different +qualities of grain, whether coming from the same or different owners, +should not from that time forward be so taken and ground together as to +produce a spurious average of quality, even when that average might be +accepted with ignorant or indifferent acquiescence in the case of the +better as well as the worse wheat.</p> + +<p>‘Why did you not attend to what I said, Green?’ enquired Oliver +angrily. ‘Mind that this lumping together does not occur again. At +the best it is a slovenly, inaccurate makeshift for clean, correct +work, which prevents a proper estimate of each quality of grain and +adulterates flour at the mill; at the worst it is an imposition and +a cheat, hiding careless negligence on our part, or consenting to +withdraw the surplus fineness and cleanness of one man’s growth of corn +in order to add it to the deficient worth of another man’s crop. I will +not have it.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span></p> + +<p>‘It were a saving of trouble as nobody objected to, instead of a wexing +petikularity,’ said Ned, startling Oliver by speaking again, and that +with such fluency as to render it suspicious whether the fluency, +together with the bluster, could proceed originally from monosyllabic, +stolid Ned. ‘It were always done afore my day, and I dunnot see why it +shouldn’t be done no longer. I can tell you Maine, as owns the best +stuff, wunnot thank you for turning it out bolted that white it might +be furrin flour. Nobody will believe it native, though he take his +Bible oath on it. Every customer will swear it’s ’Mericain and has come +over in casks, and will sour afore you can say “Jack Robinson.” And +Wade, he wunnot own his stuff, as you’d make it come out, in the course +of nature and machinery. He’ll swear it’s been tampered with, and no +wonder, since he’ll not find a buyer for it on this side of Lon’on. +He’ll be forced to mix what might have been food for men in his <span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>horse +and cattle’s mashes, or to fling it to his cocks and hens. Friarton +Mill will have seen the last of his custom,’ ended Ned sardonically.</p> + +<p>‘Never mind that, it is my business; do what I bid you.’</p> + +<p>‘And the trouble of stowing away the emptyings of the sacks separate, +and of setting and keeping the mill a-going for two bouts, which need +only have been one, will be your business too?’ said Ned, like all +willing learners going considerably beyond the bounds of his lesson and +converting bluster into insolence. ‘It is a fine gentleman scholard’s +nonsense, which is downright oonreasonable as well. Dang it, I’ll have +nowt to do with it,’ protested Ned, flinging down a spade which he had +in his hand with a noisy clatter.</p> + +<p>‘Leave it alone then, my man, and come to me at the office for your +wages,’ said Oliver, walking away.</p> + +<p>Green did not resume his work that afternoon, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span>neither did the other +men and lads. The mill stood, without anything wrong about the gear +which had in these modern times rendered a lack of water a deficiency +to be coped with. Oliver missed its accustomed hum and splash, while +‘the merry millers,’ merry no longer, hung about and consulted +together, sulky and stubborn-looking.</p> + +<p>But next day the premature shabby strike somehow collapsed. Its +promoters, including Green, chopfallen and taciturn as of old, were at +their duties again, to which Oliver suffered them to return without +farther words.</p> + +<p>It was otherwise in the bake-shop. There the mutiny was systematised +and ripe, and though it did not carry the whole establishment with it, +it cost Oliver his manager, some of his best hands, and more than it +seemed possible for him to recover from.</p> + +<p>Jim Hull came to Oliver one day in the back parlour. Speak of the great +Napoleon’s features <span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span>resembling a finely cut cameo, Jim Hull’s nose, +mouth, and chin were quite as hard, clear and set when he refused every +parley or overture of good-fellowship in the shape of refreshment, and +put it to his master point-blank: ‘Do you continue of the same mind, +Master Oliver, that no alum, nor no other harmless stuff for whitening +the bread, be used in the bakehouse, and that all sorts of fancy bread, +down to them rolls, be weighed and sold by the pound, like the reg’lar +loaf?’</p> + +<p>‘I do, Jim,’ said Oliver concisely.</p> + +<p>‘Have you taken it into consideration, sir,’ went on Jim solemnly, +‘that customers as are used to white bread and don’t want brown won’t +buy bread which, though it may be made of first-rate flour, looks as if +it were compounded of ’alf and ’alf. There’s a deal in the look of a +thing in all trades,’ said Jim almost wistfully, ‘and folk is fanciful, +and is guided by the look as well as by the taste. Nay, the taste gets +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span>trained to prefer what it has been accustomed to. There’s a many will +have pepper-dust rather than pepper, and chicory before coffee.’</p> + +<p>‘And bread either flavourless or with a suspicion of sourness or +bitterness instead of sweet bread, eh, Jim?’ chimed in Oliver. ‘Then +tastes must be reclaimed from their vitiated state for the sake of the +tasters, that’s all. I have not become a baker to sell adulterated +bread of dubious weight, even if the adulteration were innocent and the +weight in favour of the buyer. I mean to sell pure bread, by an exact +measure.’</p> + +<p>‘Bread has always been divided into two classes,’ remonstrated Jim, +growing stiff and stern again: ‘the plain and the fancy. The plain has +been measured by weight, the fancy——’</p> + +<p>‘By fancy,’ interrupted Oliver. ‘But you are aware, Jim, that if any +buyer choose to buy, by the pound, cottage loaves which, no less +than rolls, go under the head of fancy bread, the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span>baker is bound +to sell them by weight, though I do not suppose he can be fined for +apportioning them according to fancy if there is no demand to the +contrary.’</p> + +<p>‘It ain’t the custom,’ said Jim testily. ‘I crave your pardon, sir, but +to put it in that way is to insult an honest man as would not offer +less than the bulk of an article for its money’s worth, not though you +paid him for doing it in golden guineas. Have you ever thought of that, +Master Oliver, of the slur you are ready to cast on other bakers—on +your own father, for instance, that always did as he would be done by, +and on all as worked under him in responsible situations?’</p> + +<p>Oliver flushed. ‘There is no reason to look at the change in that +light, Jim,’ he said earnestly. ‘I know my father was an honest +man. There is no piece of knowledge I possess which I would be more +unwilling to give up. I have never for a moment suspected your +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span>integrity—I would as soon question my own. But every man must act +according to his <span id="cor16"></span>individual light. These practices we are talking +about are objectionable and can easily be rendered dishonest. At least +everybody should know the nature and amount of breadstuff, like any +other stuff, that he gets for his money, though I don’t say he is +cheated if he knowingly and willingly takes an artificially bleached, +roughly calculated purchase, several ounces under or over the mark, for +the look or the fashion of it. The worst is that few people know what +they are about in such transactions.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, all I have to say, Master Oliver,’ said Jim doggedly, ‘these are +a deal too fine distinctions for me. I cannot consent to be treated +like a man as has long been a party, in the capacity of foreman, to +defrauding the public of their due—me as never tampered with light +weights, which your father would have been the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span>last to even either me +or hisself to—not in our whole lives. I tell you, sir, it is putting +shame on us both, and on a respectable trade, for you to sport them +whims and fads in carrying it on at this time of day. Nobody will thank +you for it, and as for your dark-coloured, home-tasted bread, nobody +will like it or buy it. You’ll soon throw to the dogs as fine a baking +business as was ever worked up in more than one generation.’</p> + +<p>‘I can’t help that,’ said Oliver inflexibly. ‘If the townspeople are +fools and pin their faith to mock instead of to real merits, it shall +be in spite of me and not because of me.’</p> + +<p>‘Then, Master Oliver, it’s right I should speak out. My nephew ’Arry, +as was ready, with a little help, to buy the old business if it had +come into the market, will begin in Friarton, on his own account, this +here Michaelmas. He has axed me to jine him. And why shouldn’t I? I +would not have deserted the old concern <span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span>if I could have been of any +use. But it seems my experience was all wrong. I’m too old a cock to +begin afresh. Besides, I’m free to tell you the mode followed by a +young gentleman as knows nothing of trade save out of books, and is, +if he will pardon me for mentioning it, a rank enthusiast, will be all +downhill and no mistake. I cannot stop you, Master Oliver; you refuse +to be guided by me, so I must wash my hands of you, and jine my nephew +’Arry, to whom I can do a good turn, though it goes sore against the +grain if you’ll believe me, sir, to start an opposition to Constable’s +business, as I helped to make flourish, and which was the pride of my +’eart, years before you came into the world, Master Oliver.’ As Jim +ended a slight quiver passed over his compact features.</p> + +<p>‘I believe you, Jim,’ said Oliver gravely, ‘and I, for my part, am so +sorry to lose you that you may guess how much the principles are to me +which compel such a sacrifice.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span></p> + +<p>Jim shrugged his shoulders and turned away.</p> + +<p>Constable’s baking business without Jim Hull was sure to be crippled +for a time, but there were other kinds of crippling going on, and a +worse mess for Oliver to get into.</p> + +<p>Oliver, in his consciousness of his own shortcomings, and his passion +for independence and individuality, was not so much inclined to insist +on punctuality and method in his subordinates as most new brooms show +themselves. But he happened to remark that what rules and penalties +were imposed, had gradually come to be inflicted chiefly on the younger +journeymen and apprentices. The elder and more skilled bakers took +upon them, in the right of their value to Oliver and the difficulty of +replacing them on an emergency, to infringe the orders and do their +work earlier or later, faster or slower, according to their convenience +and inclination, putting about and causing some slight injury to +the subordinates, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span>and creating a certain amount of disorder in the +establishment. In place of these experts presenting a good example to +their juniors, the latter were stimulated in the reverse direction, and +prompted to acquire such qualities as might enable them in their turn +to shirk obligations and throw the weight of drudgery and discipline on +their weaker, more untrained fellows.</p> + +<p>Oliver was determined this should not be. He heard that the baker +Webster was conspicuous at this game, that he rarely kept his time, +that he compressed his kneading into the briefest operation compatible +with success, that he set his sponge at the latest date, and was guilty +of the same recklessness in placing his batch in the oven, so that he +imperilled his whole night and morning’s work, though he might escape +by the skin of the teeth from reducing it—either to a sodden mass or a +cinder, as the oven fire served.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span></p> + +<p>Webster was a man given over to a variety of conflicting interests and +distractions, rather than the victim of one vice; he was unsettled more +than dissipated, still he appeared in the bakehouse occasionally the +worse for drink.</p> + +<p>Oliver set himself to convict his servant—in name, in one of his +misdemeanours, and going into the bakehouse early one morning when the +bakers were about to subject the risen dough to the second kneading, +he found Webster’s place vacant; a friend had contrived to go through +the first process for Webster’s batch as well as for his own, but was +halting ere he proceeded to complete the performance. Oliver remarked +aloud that Webster was absent from his work, and ordered that his +batch should be worked up and put into the oven, without waiting for +his arrival or asking his permission, while Jim Hull, who was still in +office, should challenge the defender for non-attendance.</p> + +<p>But this quick catching up of Webster for <span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span>neglect of duty was quite +another affair from the neighbourly help which connived at and +concealed his delinquencies. And Jim Hull looked aggrieved in his own +person and worried by Oliver’s interference. ‘It ain’t any good,’ he +said in an undertone to Oliver. ‘Webster won’t be put upon, he’ll take +his way, but it’s a fact he’ll get more dough through his hands, to +better purpose, in ten minutes than the other lads will in twenty.’</p> + +<p>‘All the same he’ll not put upon me and the rest of the men, as I take +it he does. Who made him an exception to the rest? Put upon indeed! +I should like to know who is in danger of being put upon. Jim Hull, +you are getting soft in your old age. Let some of these fellows do +Webster’s job,’ said Oliver angrily.</p> + +<p>‘The’ve got their own jobs, and some of them is hard enough pushed to +turn out presentable batches for themselves. I tell you it ain’t every +man can take Webster’s place. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span>That there batch of his is for Dr. +Riley’s family. The doctor is difficult to please in his bread, and he +sets on some of his patients to be as cranky as hisself,’ grumbled Jim.</p> + +<p>‘I’m sorry for Riley and his patients then,’ said Oliver shortly. ‘Is +there no baker here,’ Oliver raised his voice slightly so as to be +heard by more than Jim, ‘who can knead Webster’s stuff in addition to +his own?’</p> + +<p>No man spoke. Each felt scrupulous as to the kneading which was +necessary for his batch this morning. Clearly the movement to call +Webster to order was not popular, even though it arose from his own +fault, and that a fault which only a sprinkling of the men present +would have presumed to commit.</p> + +<p>Jim Hull began slowly to strip the jacket from his rheumatic shoulders +in the hot steaming air. As he did so he repeated still more surlily, +‘It ain’t every man can take Webster’s place. Baking itself ain’t a +trade which a young <span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span>fellow can pick up at his feet any day, anyhow, +and read the rights and wrongs of it straight off—by heart, like a +printed page, then give his orders conformable.’</p> + +<p>‘Hold on, Jim.’ Oliver stopped his foreman’s preparations. ‘I suppose +you think I’ve forgotten any lessons I ever learnt. And as for those +fellows yonder,’ pointing to the row of figures at the baking-boards, +‘who are grinning behind their shirt-sleeves and their heads powdered +like flunkeys—they are a set of flunkeys to Webster or any ringleader +who chooses to hold the asses by the ears of their class prejudices and +petty vices— they believe I’m speaking of what I know nothing about, +or that I set them to do a task which I hold to be a degradation, +therefore I am dependent on their skill and fidelity—Heaven help me! +and if I were famishing I should perish for lack of bread without their +assistance. You and they are mightily mistaken though, Jim.’</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII"> + CHAPTER XXII. + <br> + <span>A REFORMER’S REWARD.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver</span> suited the action to the word, flung off his coat, bared his +long sinewy arms to the shoulders, advanced to the vacant board, and +laid hold of the dough fast becoming flat and unprofitable. In spite +of his passion he felt shy and awkward under the consciousness of +the adverse, critical eyes glancing at him, some of them in sheer +amazement, some of them in jealous resentment, some of them in sly +amusement, and only a very few of them in dubious generous approbation. +He distrusted his qualifications with reason. But when was he not +awkward? and it was surely possible for a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span>man of his muscle and +modicum of experience to knead dough into a passable condition and +dispose of it in an oven.</p> + +<p>As Oliver solemnly pounded at his lump of dough, he was assailed +mentally by successive trains of thought, contradictory, sympathetic, +purely humorous.</p> + +<p>In the first place he was angrily sensible of the same momentary rush +of shamefacedness, in trying to bake before his bakers, that he had +felt in first standing in his shop-door before his fellow-townsmen—yet +what was there in this fine, white flour, powdering him and his +companions alike, to stain a man with so disgraceful a stain that in +the case of poor Neaves, the very reflection of it caused the weak +undergraduate to leap into the Isis in order to wash out the blot and +his miserable life with it? Was the mark so much more invidious than +the soil which Neaves’s quondam companions had been fain enough to +contract from the earth of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span>hunting fields, or the soil of stables and +kennels, or the mire of race-courses, or even the smoke and blood of +a battle-field—to pass through which without ‘falling into a funk,’ +if the chance came his way, without any deed of his, constituted every +young man a hero?</p> + +<p>Why should the mere inference of having to do with wheat as it was made +into bread to feed the multitudes, operate more violently upon men’s +stupid, snobbish prejudices than the report of being mixed up with +barley in the course of becoming malt, or with hops as they passed into +ale—to form refreshment for the thirsty, no doubt? But the refreshment +was decidedly open to abuse when the great distillers and brewers might +also be the great licensed victuallers, the invisible, irresponsible +landlords of scores and hundreds of gin-palaces and ale-houses, as well +as the builders of churches and founders of schools.</p> + +<p>Oliver had a fleeting vision of Mrs. Hilliard’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span>cool, fresh +drawing-room in contrast to the hot vapour-laden bakehouse, with +Catherine Hilliard bidding men fight or die, or speak and witness for +the truth—but never mix flour, yeast and salt, and convert leaven into +wholesome bread, to fill the mouths and recruit the strength of hungry, +fainting creatures.</p> + +<p>Oliver saw Harry Stanhope standing without his coat, bareheaded, on +his half-laden cart, ‘forking’ his sheaves of corn, and knew that was +one thing in the estimation of the world and kneading dough was quite +another. There was as great a difference between them as that between +a bar of iron and a twopenny nail. Yet Oliver remembered the American +philosopher Thoreau, and his delight in the sign of self-sufficing +independence which he recognised in the act of baking his own bread. +What a manly, ay, a kingly work Thoreau had made of it, as historians +and poets had dealt with the picturesque initiatory steps taken <span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span>by +Cincinnatus when the patriot returned from saving his country in the +ranks of war, to plough, and reap, and gather in the fruits of his own +peaceful fields.</p> + +<p>Thoreau baked for his own hand, at his own will and pleasure. He was +a republican of republicans—to whom not only courts and thrones were +repugnant, but who, while he had no quarrel with his kind, sought to +know the feelings of a wild man—alone with the marvellous hordes of +lower animals whom he understood and loved, and who repaid him with +their trust—alone with Nature as she came from the hands of her Maker. +Thus Thoreau had steeped his rough bread-making in reflections which +had lent it a hue at once primitive and solemn.</p> + +<p>There was another man dubbed a baker, whether he would or not, +nicknamed in wanton mockery because he could not furnish bread for his +famished people; a shy, shrinking man, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span>not altogether without the +dignity of the line of a hundred kings—of St. Louis himself, blended +with the native dignity of innocent intentions in the midst of his +weakness, and with the pathos of a martyr for the sins of his fathers +and evil advisers, as he stood forward in the window of his palace, +wearing the red cap of anarchy for the crown of sovereignty, while +France heard him hailed, not as the monarch—not as ‘Louis le Desiré,’ +but as ‘Louis Capet, the Baker.’</p> + +<p>There was still another figure engaged in the homely occupation that +rose up then in the Friarton bakehouse. He had been introduced to +Oliver and to thousands more in the president’s speech at the close +of one of the Royal Society’s meetings. Oliver was not intimately +acquainted with the man, as the hero when he had passed from this world +was happily to be rendered familiar to the whole reading public. But +the miller and baker of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span>Friarton—a distinct specimen of his kind—had +got from the president’s speech a general idea of that other master +baker, and rejoiced and gloried in him.</p> + +<p>Oliver did not himself possess genius, yet he had some of its wide +sympathies, keen intuitions and susceptibilities, and strong beliefs. +Had the less gifted man known the greater Oliver would have prized +highly the manly self-respect and modesty, even the odd gruff bearing, +which was only the prickly husk to the sweet kernel with its milk of +human kindness and juice of a fine, genial humour, which no general +misconception, no bitter adversity, could sour. Oliver would have +gone a pilgrimage—for he, too, had his boundless enthusiasm—to that +obscure little northern bakehouse, where an intellectual and moral +giant toiled single-handed and fared frugally amidst his inspired +drawings of cherubim and seraphim, ape and Greek boy. Oliver <span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span>Constable +could not have pretended to match his brother-tradesman’s profound, +patient studies in natural science, or the royal bounty which disposed +of the geological and botanical specimens—so painfully, and yet with +such deep satisfaction and noble exultation, chiselled from the rock +and plucked from the moor. After they had been laboriously and lovingly +assorted and preserved, these specimens, together with the deductions +carefully and warily drawn from them, were lavished with princely +liberality on men of science, for whom they might win name and fame, +while the real conqueror of the spoils was content to remain ‘Dick the +Baker,’ drudging at a trade which was unremunerative to him, unknown +and unhonoured, so far as the mere tinsel of worldly distinction and +applause was concerned. And through it all Dick, who was the reverse +of a morbid, fantastic misanthropist, would have preferred a certain +amount of material prosperity <span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span>to the slow poverty which ground him to +death at last, with the honest human fear of debt and starvation. He +would have liked in his early manhood to have met with such a degree +of comprehension and fellow-feeling from his neighbours as might have +saved him from being quickly driven back on his natural reserve, +with his huge stores of kindliness, cheeriness, and wit, confined to +the kindred at a distance from him, his one or two rarely endowed, +occasional cronies, his simple old housekeeper, the young students +who were welcome to his priceless instructions without a thought of a +professor’s fee. But in the man’s lofty soul and poetic idealisation, +which could exist along with exact knowledge, he was content, with +something like scorn of being pointed out for any other distinction, +to be known only—apart from a queer fish, and a half-cracked dour +sinner—for what he still was, without prejudice or false shame, ‘Dick +the Baker.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span></p> + +<p>There would have been a greater charm in the man for Oliver than what +belonged to the simplicity and gladness which took every circumstance +of his lot bravely and thankfully, singing over his baking trough, +singing back to the roar of the waves of the Northern sea. His +heartily admiring biographer has recorded Dick’s honest practice as +a tradesman:—‘His quarter loaf always contained four pounds full, +while the two-pound loaves of many of the other bakers were short by +about four ounces. Cheating had the advantage over honesty of six per +cent. on every loaf—a profit in itself, few weighing their bread and +deducting the deficiency.’</p> + +<p>At last Oliver’s mind rambled off to a comical recollection of his +grandfather, the first Oliver Constable, miller and baker, of whom +his grandson had very authentic information, in addition to a faint +personal recollection. This Oliver had been enterprising and ambitious +as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span>any founder of a race. He had gone from a country bakehouse to +London, and served for a term there, in order to be taught what might +be the metropolitan mysteries and perfections of the trade. He had +certainly attained the power of concocting a certain pudding, which was +long held in high estimation in Friarton. The old Oliver, his wife, +children, and kindred a little farther removed, had piqued themselves +on this acquirement, and in order to keep it a private inheritance, had +shrouded it in a captivating secresy. Even in family conclave, when +there was an annual friendly gathering and festival in the baker’s +house each Christmas, and when the supper was crowned with this very +London pudding, as a fitting compliment from the host to his guests, +the rites of the piece of cookery were conducted not only with peculiar +ceremony, but with closed doors. In the course of the evening, the +hostess, having retired and seen that a collection of the necessary +materials—eggs, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span>butter, milk, flour, fruit, and spices, was complete, +and without flaw, ranged in her own back kitchen, returned to the +company, and asked her husband with brief significance, ‘Goodman, are +you ready?’</p> + +<p>The head of the house—a man of solid gravity both of body and +mind—then withdrew with quiet importance from the circle of his +friends for the space of half-an-hour. The prevailing standard of +manners exacted that nobody should remark on the retirement of the +entertainer for the good of the entertained, though it was fully +comprehended that he had thrown off his company coat, donned his +professional apron, and was then whisking eggs and beating butter in +solitude, as the highest proof of his hospitality. The result figured +at the banquet, and then all tongues were loosed in praise of the dish +and its maker.</p> + +<p>Why not? Perhaps old Oliver Constable’s exercise of his professional +skill in the middle <span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span>of his season of recreation, was a greater +sacrifice to friendship, and not more of an act of vanity, than is the +preparation of a salad or a sauce by the amateur hands of a modern host +or hostess.</p> + +<p>As Oliver shook off the flour, and put on his coat again, Webster +lounged into the bakehouse, and stopped short, bewildered, staring hard +at the empty board and the baker who had just quitted it.</p> + +<p>‘Webster, it is not in the fitting order of things that I should be +under the necessity of doing your work,’ said Oliver, whose temper had +got time to cool; ‘I have warned you before, and you have paid no heed. +The connection between us had better come to an end. I give you your +leave.’</p> + +<p>‘As you please, sir; from this moment if you like,’ said Webster +jauntily.</p> + +<p>‘Very well. I take you at your word,’ said his master.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span></p> + +<p>Oliver was inclined to make an example—if it can be called an example +among servants, whose turn has come to carry matters with a high hand, +and dictate terms to their masters. Let us hope that the new masters +will be magnanimous, and not abuse their power, to a still greater +extent than was done by the old, else the present dead-lock would never +have arisen.</p> + +<p>But Oliver was not aware—whether or not the knowledge might have +swayed him—of the combination of circumstances which rendered +Webster’s dismissal a severe blow to the man, in spite of his bravado, +at a crisis in his affairs. The restless, factious baker had been +keeping company with a girl slightly above him in station, whose +relations, especially her father—a thriving master-builder, of +punctilious and conservative views—did not by any means admire in +his prospective son-in-law the hectoring tone, and the free and easy +ways, which, along <span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span>with considerable force of will and cleverness at +his trade, as at other things, had secured for Webster an ascendency +among the other journeymen bakers, who were characterised for the most +part by greater pliability and less ability. The principal score in +Webster’s favour was his remaining in Mr. Constable’s service. It was +this which kept Webster from being rejected with unhesitating severity +by Keys the builder, and as an inevitable consequence of the summary +dismissal, with tender regret, by pretty, gentle, Nelly Keys. For +though Nelly had been greatly taken with her lover’s lordly swagger, +she was too good a girl, and too dutiful a daughter, to act in direct +disobedience to her father.</p> + +<p>When Webster got his leave from Oliver, he knew it was all up with him +and Nelly, to whom he was attached with the peculiar vehemence and +self-assertion of his nature, though he put the best face on what he +regarded as a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span>misfortune, if not a wrong, and braved it out at the +first brush in the bakehouse.</p> + +<p>And sure enough, Keys told Webster on the afternoon of the same day +to keep the outside of the master-builder’s door for the rest of the +journeyman baker’s stay at Friarton. The said master-builder had seized +the opportunity of the first rumour of Webster’s quarrel with Mr. +Constable to rescue his daughter from a future husband who had shown +himself a breeder of mischief and instigator to rebellion, and was +likely to end a noisy idle demagogue, a rolling stone that would gather +no moss.</p> + +<p>After trying in vain to soften the father, and next to obtain a private +interview with the weeping Nelly, in order to drag from her a promise +to stand by her lover, against her father and the whole world, Webster +took refuge in a Friarton gin-palace, and continued there so long as +to do still more deadly injury <span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span>to his cause. He was seen towards +nightfall, in Friarton streets, drunk and disorderly, a long step for a +tradesman who has hitherto been decorous in his cups, and who has not +‘gone on the spree’ like any shameless reprobate.</p> + +<p>Another day intervened, during which Webster went here and there, +unable, in spite of his boasted powers, to secure a second engagement +in Friarton or its neighbourhood. Instead of getting rid of the fumes +of rage and drink, he contracted still denser fumes of a similar +description. As ill luck would have it, on the evening of the second +day, when the man, always headstrong and violent, and now half-beside +himself with disappointment, mortification, and Dutch courage, was on +his way to the village at which Jim Hull’s nephew still kept together +his country connection, Webster’s path took him past Friarton Mill, and +at some hundred yards’ distance from the house, he <span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span>encountered his +late master, taking a stroll in the autumn dusk, with his hands in his +pockets and his pipe in his mouth.</p> + +<p>Oliver was about to pass by his discarded baker with a brief ‘Good +evening,’ when Webster brushed up against him, and delivered himself of +a sneering, stammering proposal: ‘Let us have a little of your company, +Mister Constable—take a walk together—not out of the way when you +don’t object to fill my place in the bakehouse.’</p> + +<p>Oliver saw the state the man was in, and sought to be quit of him +without an unpleasant scene. ‘No; the arrangement would be rather +different,’ he said coolly; ‘but I have no mind to discuss it. Get out +of my road, man, or it will be the worse for you.’</p> + +<p>The last sentence was provoked by Webster’s stumbling right across +Oliver’s path, and standing unsteadily barring his farther progress.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span></p> + +<p>‘So, Mister Constable, it was enough to meddle with my baking, and +bully, and make short work of me, though you have not a word to say to +me for the wrong done me—not a word as from man to man, when we meet +like equals. Anyhow, the meeting-place is on a road as is free to both +of us, and under the dark night which is going to come down, and cover +both of us—and what one of us may choose to do to settle the question +between us,’ said Webster incoherently and grandiloquently.</p> + +<p>‘What should I have to say to you?’ demanded Oliver. ‘You broke faith +as a servant, you were not in the bakehouse when it was your duty to me +and the other men that you should be there. I simply did my duty as a +master in turning you adrift, not without repeated notice beforehand of +what must happen.’</p> + +<p>Webster was not open to reason. He was brutal with unrestrained passion +and distraught <span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span>with strong drink. He shouted the lie direct to Oliver, +following the accusation of falsehood with a fierce curse and a furious +blow.</p> + +<p>Such things happen still, occasionally, in England, in spite of +civilisation, propriety, and the rural police.</p> + +<p>Oliver could have best parried the blow by a counter-blow, which, +directed by a strong, steady, not untrained hand, would have laid the +reeling assailant at the assailed man’s feet. But he had an objection +to this aggressive mode of self-defence in which he was certain to come +off conqueror, and in trying merely to parry the violent lunge made at +him, Oliver entangled his long legs with those of his enemy, swerved, +swayed, and fell, somewhat ignominiously, to the ground.</p> + +<p>Webster, notwithstanding his half-furious, half-dazed malice, was still +so much the creature of order, and of a peaceful if bragging past, as +to take no advantage of Oliver’s lying <span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span>prone at the man’s feet and at +his mercy for one decisive minute—the next, Webster uttered a crow of +triumph, administered a not unnatural, but most unchivalrous kick to +the shins of the antagonist struggling on his feet again, and meandered +away in the gathering darkness.</p> + +<p>Oliver stood wincing with pain, pulling himself together, and +not believing his senses till he was forced to laugh at his own +incredulity. He might have given chase to the fellow in the heat of the +fray, since Oliver imagined any damage which he had received would have +yielded, for the moment, to the fighting cock in him, while it ought +to have been about matched by the enemy which Webster had put into his +mouth, to steal away his brains and the right use of his legs.</p> + +<p>Oliver could, with still greater ease, have called aloud, and reckoned +with security on his call being heard as far as Ned Green’s and the +other millers’ cottages, bringing him instant <span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span>assistance, which Oliver +did not believe would have been withheld because of the disaffection +common both to the mill and the bakehouse. Webster’s outrage had +been too gross and included the chance of turning the tables, and +effectually scaring many of the conspirators.</p> + +<p>As it was, Oliver did neither. He laughed again, a little +constrainedly, for that kick on his shins, though he had been +accustomed to be mauled at football, and though this was almost a +playful kick administered in the delirious inconstancy of Webster’s +mind, had done its work with considerable effect.</p> + +<p>After his short laugh Oliver began to reflect. ‘I must have hurt the +rascal on some tender spot to reduce him to such excess of drink and +madness in a couple of days. I gave credit to his pretensions and to +Jim Hull’s dogmatic assurance that Webster would find another master +sooner than I should another servant. Well, there’s nothing to be done +at this time of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span>the day. It is utterly impossible now for him to make +submission and agree to my terms, or for me to reinstate him in the +bakehouse, but we may be no more than quits, although he should have +contrived to crack my ankle-bone. How shall I manage to hop home, +though Fan accuses me of a propensity to stand on one leg? And what am +I to say to Fan and the world at large? A fall? It was a fall, but a +jolly rum fall to produce such consequences.’</p> + +<p>Yet Oliver had no further account to give of the accident, whether it +were pride or magnanimity, or a mixture of both, which kept him silent. +He would not condescend to a more particular explanation, though it was +discovered in time that some of the smaller bones of his ankle had been +fractured, and that because the injury had not been properly attended +to at first—on account of his having choked down his suffering, and +slurred over the amount of damage he had received—there <span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span>followed a +protracted and painful imprisonment to the mill-house. And Oliver came +out of it, and the accompanying illness, even though he had allowed a +pair of learned physicians to be summoned to his aid, limping slightly +for life on one ankle—if not on one knee like Horatius Coccles, as the +culminating touch to his awkwardness.</p> + +<p>The accident and its result, when the latter came to be fully known, +excited some stir and talk in Friarton. Of course no ordinary fall +on a level country road as smooth as a bowling-green, to a man in +full possession of his wits and limbs, could have occasioned such a +disaster. The marvel was, how Oliver Constable had fallen at all on +the familiar and sure ground even in the uncertain light of gathering +night, people commented with raised eyebrows. But doubtless it was +his best policy to vouchsafe no details of this unaccountable fall. +There could be hardly any question that it had occurred in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span>some +discreditable scuffle or brawl with low companions. The speakers +recalled the moonlight frolics of the young tradesmen, the time out +of mind removal of lamps from honoured doors, the letting loose of a +pig or two from their styes, with the wild attempt at inaugurating a +boar-hunt in the streets of Friarton. Oliver Constable had been known +to be present at these disgraceful performances, though he might have +been charitably supposed beyond taking an active part in the idiotic +riotous amusements. But innate low tastes, possibly a secret, wretched, +craving for what was generally the stimulant to such uproarious +behaviour, had certainly prevailed over the superficial refinement +wrought by education.</p> + +<p>Oliver Constable was likely to prove a dangerous tempter and corrupter +in place of a fine model for his class to follow, and a bracing +encouragement by way of example to the young men of the lower middle +rank. He was a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span>proper fellow to mask his self-indulgence and license +under the guise of philanthropy and unworldliness, to pose as a +reformer! Here was a crying instance of a wolf in sheep’s clothing!</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard repeated the essence of the scandal to her cousin +Catherine over their afternoon tea. Oliver Constable was coming out in +the colours which might, perhaps, have been detected from the first, +through the daubing done over them, by a man of the world. The accident +which had fixed a permanent shamble on his gait, was said to have +happened in a shocking drunken row.</p> + +<p>It was symptomatic that there had been some time ago a split among the +chapel people, with which Oliver Constable was mixed up. In general +these splits were tokens of a disease peculiar to dissenting bodies, in +which nobody outside dreamt of taking any interest. For that matter, +nobody was likely to hear of the divisions unless from servants and +tradespeople. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span>But for Oliver Constable, who ought to have been the +chief pillar of the chapel, to be in bad odour with the members was too +ominous to be passed over. Here was the end of foolish aspirations, +of eccentricity, and not doing at Rome as the Romans did, but aiming +at being hero or saint or a mixture of both. So Apollo and Caliban by +turns had merged into Vulcan, who had been stealing very vulgar and +unhallowed fire indeed when he met his fit punishment. Mrs. Hilliard +was sorry for Fan—yes, she could spare sincere pity for Fan Constable +at last.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard told her tale with a curious mixture of regret +and annoyance—since she had chosen to count kindred with the +Constables—and of lurking satisfaction, because what she had said +of Oliver’s high faluting, what she had prophesied as sure to follow +transcendental ambition, had been borne out. She had called Oliver half +Apollo half Caliban, she herself was <span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span>half a good-natured woman, half a +mocking-cynic.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard was stopped by Catherine. The cold statue became +strangely warm, and instinct with life and emotion—red hot, actually +gasping for breath in her indignation. ‘I wonder at you, Louisa,’ +panted Catherine, ‘to listen to such wicked slander, to give +credence to it for a moment, to put yourself on an equality with its +fabricators, helping in its circulation. Oliver Constable is a good +man, true as steel, pure as honesty itself, kind as a brother, though +he may waste his fine qualities. I will pledge myself for his perfect +innocence of anything so despicable and loathsome as hypocrisy—even if +he were weak enough to be vicious and not as he is, too strong in his +virtue to care for appearances.’</p> + +<p>‘He does not lack an enthusiastic champion,’ observed Mrs. Hilliard, +letting the corners of her mouth droop. ‘Take care, my dear, you are +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span>not infallible in your convictions any more than the gentleman is +in his conduct. The passion for being <i>outré</i> seems infectious. +Ah! blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be +disappointed. I have not been so wise as to be without expectation, +though I have had my misgivings. Now I must confess, in spite of your +looking daggers at me, I am disappointed in Oliver Constable. The +sequel threatens to exceed so tremendously what I bargained for. I +only anticipated a ludicrous collapse; I did not go in for a dismal +wreck—at which I shall not be able to laugh, therefore you need not +be angry with me,’ complained Mrs. Hilliard with a half-comical air of +injury.</p> + +<p>But Catherine was angry, in season and out of season, with the wrong +as well as the right person. For how did this staunch champion treat +Oliver the next time she met him, limping slowly down Friarton High +Street? She passed him quickly with the slightest and coldest bow <span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span>that +any of his defamers had yet administered to him. Mrs. Hilliard could no +more have bowed in that fashion than she could have taken up a stone +and thrown it at the culprit. It was the next thing to a cut direct, +and it did cut Oliver to the heart, with the lively impression that +Catherine Hilliard had listened to and believed the worst of the idle, +senseless, shameful lies told of him.</p> + +<p>As for Catherine, she was saying to herself in a fever of perverse, +reproachful wrath and mortification. ‘What right had he who was so +manly, courageous and steadfast to cast his pearls before swine till +they turned and rent him: to spend himself in a manner and for a cause +unworthy of the gift: to act so recklessly that he could be thus +monstrously misjudged and maligned?’</p> +<br> +<br> +<p class="center">END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.</p> +<br> + +<p class="sub1 center"><i>Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a><a id="Page_303"></a>[Pg 303]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="front"> +ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS<br> +<span class="allsmcap">OF</span><br> +<span class="sub3">POPULAR WORKS.</span><br></p> +<p class="center sub2">Handsomely bound in cloth gilt, each volume containing<br> +Four Illustrations. 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Crown 8vo. +6<i>s.</i></p> +</blockquote> + +<br> + +<p class="center">London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="transnote"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcriber_Notes"> + Transcriber Notes + </h2> + +<table> + <tr> + <td></td> + <td>The following are corrections to the original text.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p12</td> + <td><a href="#cor1">“to” added to (to her, he had).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p45</td> + <td><a href="#cor2">“unkown” changed to (an unknown specimen).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p52</td> + <td><a href="#cor3">period added to (something in my line.)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p53</td> + <td><a href="#cor4">“luciters” changed to (invented before lucifers.)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p62</td> + <td><a href="#cor5">“quarterspast” changed to (till three quarters past).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p73</td> + <td><a href="#cor7">“hinfluenzas” changed to (with her colds and influenzas).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p107</td> + <td><a href="#cor8">closing quote added to (whatever is necessary.’)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p138</td> + <td><a href="#cor9">comma added to (who was no reformer,)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p148</td> + <td><a href="#cor10">“taat” changed to (Agne—that her).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p168</td> + <td><a href="#cor11">“tat” changed to (this instance—that).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p171</td> + <td><a href="#cor12">“Freemantle” changed to (Mr. Fremantle was content).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p182</td> + <td><a href="#cor13">closing quote removed from (cousin. That would try).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p213</td> + <td><a href="#cor14">“suceeed” changed to (succeed in bringing him).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p248</td> + <td><a href="#cor15">closing quote added to (will be a Nonconformist.’)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>p263</td> + <td><a href="#cor16">period added to (to his individual light.)</a></td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78315 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/78315-h/images/cover.jpg b/78315-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..51f8424 --- /dev/null +++ b/78315-h/images/cover.jpg |
